


Elusive Words

by AntiKryptonite



Category: Firefly
Genre: Brother and sister relationship, Clarity in the midst of insanity, Gen, River pov, outside looking in, selflessness, the crew and the two passengers, through the series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-01 23:12:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntiKryptonite/pseuds/AntiKryptonite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a disconnect between the thoughts swirling through River's head and the words that pour from her mouth, but there's something very important she needs to tell Simon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Protect

\---

Split. Splintered. Fractured. Her mind had been broken, shattered into a million pieces against the hard surface that came two by two with hands of blue, and now all that was left was scattered across the cold, hard, barren ground. Shards of glass lying there and reflecting back light that glittered and shimmered and deceptively illuminated, hiding everything it promised to reveal. Each piece of glass contained some bit of her, but it was all diffracted and diffused and diverted, torn apart so that nothing made sense and she didn’t even know who she was—one minute, the sparkles that showed in one jagged piece, the next the shadows populating a splinter near the edge of the mess that was River.

It was hard, when there were hundreds of her, to keep hold of any individual thought, to grasp hold of one truth and hold onto it when always the light and shadows were moving and playing and sliding along the surfaces and cracks and gaps between all the sharp pieces of _her_.

Hard, yes, but it would have been worse than that—would have been impossible—if it weren’t for Simon.

He provided cohesion, coherence, brief flashes of lucidity. He was _real_ and _solid_ and _safe_ and he provided a shelter, a refuge, a presence that bent the light around his own form and chased away the shadows so that the glass reflected more than just the play of light and dark. He made the glass give up little hints of the her-that-had-been, and as long as he was there, a presence, a _something_ reflected in that glass to remind her that she was _River-his-sister_ —as long as he was there, she could stay in one piece of glass for indeterminate amounts of time. When he was there, she wasn’t so fluid, wasn’t shifting and changing and moving and losing and drifting.

Some pieces of the glass showed her images of Simon appearing from the terrible unknown in front of her, the shadow of darkness clothing him, death clutched in his hand. But that had, she thought later, been only an illusion—a disguise granted by scraps of cloth that uniformed him in gray blackness, the death he’d brought with him weakened in his hand so that it turned from eternal oblivion to a merciful slap that left her tormentors sprawled on the ground, nothing more than bundles of flesh and clothing. He had drawn a dagger out of her and christened her with blood on her temple and whispered a benediction that even now drew her out of the depths of nightmares that terrorized her and memories that weren’t hers and voices that shrieked at her from the grave.

“It’s Simon—it’s your brother.”

The pieces of glass that embodied her consciousness shifted and rearranged themselves as her eyes fluttered open. There was a scream echoing through the chasm that yawned within her, a whimper that stirred ripples across the collection of sharp and jagged reflections. The scream died out and the whimper faded, but harsh breaths annoyed her, sounded loud in her ears, and the sight that greeted her lost, wandering eyes was confusing.

“Shh, River, it’s okay. It’s me—Simon. I’m here, River.”

The blue and white and silver of the Academy was gone. Someone had stripped it of its imperial, ruthless façade and revealed the warm, glowing, beating heart. But that had to be wrong, because no splinter of glass—whether shadowed in blackness or piercingly, blindingly lit—allowed her to believe that this softened warmth could ever exist under the soulless exterior that had lured her to its arms with brochures that dripped smiles and leaked promises and then betrayed her with pens that killed and voices that promised uniqueness and delivered pain and torment and everything else that made screams rip their way from her unwilling throat.

Another ripple, a shimmer across reflective surfaces, and she remembered ice and cold and snow burrowing its way into her flesh, a hurried whisper from Simon that promised her the snowflake would wrest her free of the halls and classrooms and teachers that had deceived her and tricked her by promising her she could dance. She thought she remembered Simon kneeling before her, gathering her into arms that were _solid_ and _warm_ and _real_ —the first real thing she’d encountered since leaving home and family and sanity. And maybe there was a memory of other things, Simon flying—or falling?—to her rescue like some kind of avenging angel holding a mute gun, and a darkly lit silhouette striding in from the blazing sun that tore away the noose from her neck, and maybe a collection of souls so very different and varied floating in the Black, and…and…and she couldn’t remember.

But Simon was here, she saw. Or thought she saw. Maybe he was only here in one reflection, and maybe the other hundreds of copied images would reveal that he wasn’t really there at all. But no, he moved forward, so cautiously, so tentatively, so filled with concern and worry and love, and he touched her, and she thought she might shatter and break again, thought the glass might just all turn into dust that would enter her mouth with every breath of hope and tear her insides to shreds because it was _Simon_ and he was here and he was holding her and…he had come for her. She had known he would, feared he wouldn’t, dreamed he did.

When the weight and warmth of his palm on her shoulder and the wandering tips of his fingers on her cheek touched her, profiled her, separated her from the nothingness that was all around her, curtains fell away and brushed the scales from her eyes and she knew that she was the one who had screamed, that the nightmares were the alarm that had pulled Simon from his bed, that the glowing, beating life around her was the innards of the Firefly currently sheltering them beneath its exoskeleton.

“Simon?” she whispered, and a sob forced its way past her lungs and into open air at the sound of her own voice, the first time she’d heard it in an unspecified amount of days/weeks/months/years.

“It’s okay, River. Shh. I’m here.”

“The glare,” she told him, horrified that she hadn’t known he was there, that she had missed his presence, that she had doubted him. “I couldn’t see you past the glare.”

“Shh. There’s no glare now,” he told her, and the matter-of-fact tone in his voice scattered a hundred shadows from the glass so that in an instant, she was wealthy beyond measure with memories of years long past, of afternoons spent doing homework and fighting off Independents, of evenings playing hide-and-seek under the dinner table and cajoling a smile from her too-serious, responsible brother. She gasped and spluttered and tried not to drown beneath the onslaught of memories, so rich and full of meaning and emotion and substance that she had to grab painful hold of Simon’s wrist to keep herself in the _now_.

“More nightmares?” he asked, but he already knew. It was apparent in the way he settled himself on the edge of her bed and cradled her in the crook of his arm and studied her own face with his intent blue eyes—not the blue of harsh lights and searing tests; a warmer blue, shaded and nuanced and substantial—and in the soft edges that dipped his voice in delicious safety.

“I remember,” she informed him solemnly. With recollection had come understanding—the understanding that these memories would soon fade and leave her once more darting from splinter to glass splinter, that time would once more slip through her stiff fingers, that she might forget again that Simon had read her letters and believed her and followed her through the Black and rescued her.

“You remember? Do you…do you want to talk about them?” Simon was cautious as he asked the question, and she—River, that was her name, and right now, she could remember Simon teasing her about always flowing through life so quickly that she slipped through his fingers just like water—she rolled her eyes at the lightning-fast realization that he thought she referred to the nightmares. Simon was always so single-minded, which had been irritating when she’d wanted only to distract him from the studies on which he used to focus so intently.

“Us,” she replied. “I remember us.”

The nightmares…those she never forgot. They were with her all the time, constantly, ceaselessly, chasing her back into the splintered and fractured mindset that kept her shattered and broken. But him…he was from the past, from the _before_ , and that was so much harder to hold onto.

Simon’s face softened, his arm relaxing around her, and River felt a rush of affection so strong and all-encompassing that it actually pained her. She wasn’t sure whether the emotion was originally hers or her brother’s, but it bounced back and forth between them, growing and strengthening with each pass so that there was nothing else in the ‘verse that mattered next to it.

“I remember us, too,” he said softly, quietly. The golden room around them was a cocoon, then, a chrysalis that wrapped the two of them in its paper-thin shell and spun life and growth around them while all of the ‘verse held its breath in anticipation, waiting to see what would emerge. “River, I…I came for you as quickly as I could. It…it took me so long. I’m sorry.”

Lucidity granted her speed, and she was already shaking her head vehemently. “No, no, no. You came for me. You’re here. Time is subjective—this… _this_ is what’s important.”

His smile was so small, yet it birthed something within River’s heart, something tiny and heavy and bruised. She thought she had known the name of such a pervasive feeling before, and she knew that if she thought on it long enough, it would return to her—she was smart, everyone said so, and soon enough, she would figure it out, surely. It made her want to reach out with trembling hands that somehow weren’t clean enough or worthy enough for this task and touch that smile, feel it for herself, reassure the doubts within her that it was real. That _he_ was real.

But there was no time because already the memories that had enveloped her in liquid, silken cohesion were starting to dim and dull and slither away. Soon they would be gone and it would only be her and the hundreds of other hers, each one just a glimmer, a facet, a tiny piece of a whole-that-was-no-longer-whole, nothing else left.

No Simon.

“Simon!” Panic nibbled at her voice like little bugs. She wanted to shoo them away, but somehow they had crawled their way inside her and now rested deep within her, nibbling at internal things. She was a bit relieved by this—after all, Simon was a doctor. He could fix anything that was broken inside her, could sew everything back together again, she knew it. He was a doctor, but not like the doctors that had stabbed her and punctured her with as many holes as there were stars and whispered words that stole will and momentum and morals from her. He was the kind of doctor that fixed and helped and repaired, and he would fix her just as he had fixed all the people he’d told her about during his internship.

“It’s all right, River.” His fingers brushed through her hair, swinging the tendrils like rain, and the encroaching darkness receded a bit before his touch and voice and the hope stirring within him at this sign of her comprehension and connection to the world outside herself.

She liked that he said her name so much, could feel the repetition sewing her back together—stitching the name to _her_ —just like the needle and thread he had used on that girl with the hazel eyes that whispered of engines and smiles—a girl she hadn’t known yet who had spoken to River so casually—who was now sleeping in the blue-white-silver place that was like the ones at the Academy and yet different because _this_ blue-white-silver place was Simon’s.

“I have something for you, River.” Simon stood up, then, and River watched him. Something deep and dangerous opened up within her the instant he pulled away from her in order to rummage in a ravenous bag near the door. Something warm and caressing banished that same darkness when he turned back to her and reclaimed his place at her side. His warmth hunted down every particle of cold that clung to her and warred with them, a hundred tiny battles fought on her flesh, mimicking the battles between coherence and insanity constantly playing out in her head.

Simon’s hands encompassed a bundle, and her eyes locked on it hungrily, greedily, curiously, wanting to devour it immediately. But Simon was speaking, and his soft voice, so carefully enunciating each specially chosen word, called out for her attention, the simmering, tamped-down excitement in his eyes compelling her hand to finally come out and brush, quickly and lightly, across his bruised cheekbone.

“I’m sorry that I missed your seventeenth birthday—it was…” He swallowed and glanced away before returning attention to her. “It was just a few weeks before…before _Serenity_. But I brought you a present.”

Shock reeled within her. Seventeen? She was…she was only…fourteen? No, fifteen. Or maybe sixteen. But not…not seventeen. That would mean that…that _years_ had passed while other hands rummaged in her head and nightmares were planted there so carefully, so carelessly, so damagingly. That would mean that…what? What _did_ it mean?

Nothing. The passage of years was inconsequential, really, nothing at all next to the subdued hope and cautious optimism bringing something more than—something else besides—worry and fear and guilt and concern to Simon’s voice and eyes and being.

So she tried to smile at him, tried to smile _for_ him, as a reward for his unfailing goodness. She knew—thought she had known forever—that he was a good brother, the best brother, never resentful when she corrected his mistakes, always willing to set aside his work and help her strategize how to best utilize the dinosaurs they stole from the Browncoats, ever faithful to show up to her dance recitals and private tea parties.

Never disbelieving when she sent him her desperate code. Always willing to give up life and home and career to come save her. Ever faithful to leave his sleep and his dreams and his own new bed and find her to chase away nightmares with the strength of his existence and presence and endless, boundless determination.

“Here.” Simon unwrapped the bundled fabric in his hands and revealed her present: a thin blanket worn to almost nothing, transparently thin, achingly soft, colors faded to invisibility. It was a solid, concrete gift that was almost entirely translucent, and so tiny, though it had once been much bigger, in size and importance.

“A sentimental memento of the past,” River said as her hands ran over the tactile memory, as the nightmares receded before this proof that she— _River_ —was real.

Simon’s smile turned almost mischievous. “I knew you’d remember. I felt so bad for saying that and making you leave it behind. So I kept it safe for you, ready to send it to you if you ever asked for it.”

She couldn’t meet his eyes, couldn’t look up, couldn’t match his hope. Because he wanted her to be River-that-was, wanted his sister back, the one who had danced and laughed and teased and played and loved uninhibitedly. He wanted _his_ River back, and he didn’t—couldn’t—understand that _his_ -River was gone. She’d been systematically beaten and tortured and killed, every single facet of her brutally slaughtered until all that was left was broken-River.

He had come for her…but she hadn’t waited for him. She’d gone and died and disappeared, and now all that was left were the pieces he was trying to fix, trying to sew back up without realizing that no matter how many times he stitched her name to the pieces of glass, it’d always just slip away, just break and shatter and leave her with even more pieces to cast glittering sparkles that blinded and deafened her.

Here he was, alone and lost and so starkly contrasted against the rough and tumble world they now inhabited, his clothing and bearing and speech as out of place in this Valley of misfits and outcasts and good-hearted outlaws as she was, Serenity only a concept, a word, a definition to him, a place he had left far behind in his past.

And he was here because of her.

Only… _her_ didn’t even exist anymore.

And his hopeful expression, his fond dedication, his overpowering, overwhelming _love_ was too much for her.

Tears stung her eyes, made the shattered pieces float atop the swirling liquid, fell to further obscure the once-vivid colors. She brought up the blanket that had been _his_ -River’s blanket since infancy to her nose, wanting to smell the taste of home, but it was weakened and diluted by the smells of the ship that so reluctantly carried them. And she knew—she knew that Simon was just like this blanket.

A remnant of River’s past carried into the future for sentimental reasons. All color and scent wrung from it, dragged out of it, slowly and torturously and lingeringly. Still meaning something and yet its importance relegated entirely to the past. A fond memento of her previous life brought to her tortured side because she couldn’t bear to be alone.

“It’s River’s,” she murmured, her nose still buried in the blanket, her fingers tracing the contours of Simon’s face.

He smiled at her again. She wished he would quit doing that, wished he knew how painful it was, yet conversely, wished that he would be kept forever innocent of the darkness inside her. His own darkness had been a disguising uniform he’d torn off in order to fly her into the heavens to a waiting ship and the icy snowflake that carried her here, but her darkness was deeper than that, entrenched and entwined within her so that it couldn’t be torn free without taking all that remained of her with it.

“It’s yours, River,” he confirmed.

“Yours too.” She worked at the fabric with her hands, struggled to find the exact halfway point of the blanket without measuring tape. “The exchange of gifts—one of equal value in return for another.”

“Shh.” Simon tried to calm her, placed his hand over hers as if the mere sensation of flesh on flesh would be enough to tear her goal from her. She wished it was that simple, knew that it would have been for _his_ -River, but it wasn’t nearly enough for _broken_ -River.

“For you,” she insisted, and she tore the blanket in half.

“No, River!” Simon stared down at the ripped memento as if she had ripped _him_ in half, but when he looked back up at her, she saw in his eyes only the desire to understand.

“Here, two halves of the same whole.” She took his hand in hers, felt the beating of his blood through his veins, a comforting thrum she absently shifted to the back of her mind so that it could soothe her when the last of these lucid moments danced out of her reach. He let her straighten his fingers, curled them back up again when she placed one of the strips of family-worn fabric atop his palm, action and reaction. But was he the reaction, or was she? Who had started it? Who had come first? He had entered the ‘verse first, but he seemed to have tied himself inextricably to her, as if he didn’t want to be alone, as if he could only respond to her.

She didn’t want to be alone either, but she was scared—utterly, wholly terrified—that one day he would be gone and she would be alone. So maybe it was better to prepare him now, to make sure he knew that he’d have to learn to get along without her.

Only…only from the way he cradled the blanket in his hand and smiled up at her, she didn’t think he wanted to learn that lesson. And so she let him stay safe and sheltered in his innocence and caressed him with her eyes and hoped with all her being—all of _his_ -River’s being, not quite as dead as she had thought, and all of _broken_ -River’s being, not as alive as he would like—that he’d stay the same, stay _her_ -Simon.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he whispered, the breath of his being shaped into words that touched her. “Just having you back is a gift. _You’re_ a gift, _mei-mei_.”

“It’s fitting,” she explained as she straightened her portion of the memento in her lap. “We’re two halves of the same whole too. Simon and River. Focus and whimsy. Purpose and freedom. Dignity and grace. Doctor and…and…”

Assassin.

Light and dark.

The memories she held, granted by Simon’s presence, were being tarnished, sullied, dirtied by what was now flashing through her, by the harsh lights gleaming in the shattered glass, stained and tainted by blood. So she let them slip away, gave them to Simon for safekeeping because it was better to be a little confused now than to let all the goodness still left to her be ruined by the nightmares that possessed her. They tiptoed out of her reluctantly, lingering as long as possible, sad to leave her.

Simon didn’t know that the remnants of _his_ -River were leaving, thought that she was still his sister, still a half. So he smiled his amusement and said, “Two halves—Simon and River. We are, aren’t we. I’ll keep this safe for you, River.”

“No.” She reached out and took back the blanket in his hand. “This one is yours—I’ll keep it safe for you. You take mine and—”

“I’ll take care of it,” he promised her, and the intensity shone from him so brilliantly, so beautifully, so breathtakingly. “I love you, _mei-mei_.”

He watched her, waited, poised on a precipice, but she had forgotten the steps to this dance, had lost the beat of this song, had drifted too far from the trodden path, so she merely looked at him. And only belatedly, only as shadows began to fall over the pattern Simon cast across the shards-of-River did she realize that he was waiting for her to say she loved him too. Waiting for that shred of proof that his sister was still there for him.

But any proof she gave him of that would be misleading at best, completely fallacious at worst.

And the words wouldn’t come.

Tears floated into reality again, and River gave over her blanket of well-being to him. And then, daringly, longingly, sorry for the flicker that had floated through him at her marked silence, she drew close to him, hesitant, her hands shaking, so afraid that just touching him would hurt her, would hurt him, and she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him. And the perfume she had looked for in the blanket—the scent of home that she hadn’t found—it was there. Lathered over Simon’s body, smoothed into his hair, infused in his clothing, drifting around him like a private atmosphere he carried everywhere with him, setting him apart from every other being in the ‘verse.

He smelled like home.

He _was_ her home.

She held onto him tightly, held onto the pattern of his heartbeat, held onto his name and his presence as the last of her slipped away and another piece of glass circled into prominence, revealing another, _lesser_ facet of her.

When she started laughing, started reciting numbers that meant nothing until she moved onto another splinter and found the image of a jumbled computer screen from The Academy, Simon simply stopped hugging her, folded up her blanket, murmured soothing words to her, smoothed back her hair, and let her whisper and mutter until she fell asleep.

Later, when the shadows and the light met with just the right amount of contrast to let her remember where she was and what the strip of cloth under her pillow was, she looked at that blanket, the memento of Simon, and she thought on how best to keep it safe as she had promised.

Glimpses, dreamlike and staggered, reminded her that Simon kept his folded like a handkerchief, kept it safe in his vest pocket, kept it right next to his heart. It was safest there, where he kept _his_ -River curled up and protected, safe from anything and everything, fixed in its eternal spot there. He’d never let anything take her away, never give her away, never forget her. His heart was secure and safe, a refuge that still thrummed and hummed and beat somewhere in her mind where she had placed his pulse.

But she couldn’t keep his blanket near her heart. Hers was just an organ, suitable only for pumping blood, not for keeping love safe. Not for protecting Simon.

Later again, after he took her out to see the stars even though fear sang through his veins, she took the memento of him and she hid it deep in the bowels of _Serenity_. It was safest there, safer when it wasn’t next to her, when it was protected by a crew and metal and a past. Safest when she forgot all about it and so kept the nightmares from finding it.

\---


	2. Preserve

\---

Confusion prevailed. Time passed, unrelated intervals punctuated by vivid moments that seared her with overwhelming emotion or hazy dreams that passed her by in a fog completely unrelated to moisture. Whenever she became aware, Simon was there. Even when she wasn’t aware, when the voices drowned out _her_ and the nightmares possessed her, Simon was there.

Sometimes, weary and drained and so very, very tired of treading the secrets and terrors and uncertainties that assailed her constantly, she would flee the shards-that-were-River, flee _River_ entirely, and she’d drift through Simon. He was untainted, untarnished, undimmed. His essence was clear and clean and compartmentalized, rows upon rows of shelves filled with boxes where he’d stored up everything that was _him._ She would wander the long rows of shelves, trailing her fingertips along the cool boxes unmarred by dust, comforted by the purposeful efficiency that was her Simon, by the clean lack of clutter, by the purposeful order and the intensive quiet. By the overwhelming multitude of boxes and shelves and entire rows that had _her_ name so affectionately stamped on them.

Only there, only when she was safe in the refuge he willingly provided her—gave her through virtue of his hand on her head, his arm around her shoulders, his voice in her ears—only there was she able to find a bit of respite. Only when he gave her that link could she close her eyes and sleep without being consumed by the fierce terrors waiting to drag her back to The Academy and their clawing, screaming, wounding secrets. Only with him could she remember that this _broken_ -River wasn’t normal, wasn’t all she had to rely on, wasn’t the entirety of her existence; only with him could she remember that there had once been a River who thought in straight lines and danced through the air and laughed without crying and effortlessly told her brother that she loved him.

But the stability of his presence and the cold that had cradled her to itself in order to rescue her from those with hands of blue and shrieks that mutely rent the air…they faded, drifted, the strength of their defense aided by novelty and surprise, both elements withering away. Simon was always there, in the background, his pulse ringing in her ears, his presence acting like skin, a dermal layer separating her from the nothingness of the Black populated by emptiness and screams and dreams that were shattered more often than granted. The cold was always there, too, surrounding the firefly that flitted from moon to moon, glowed staunchly to combat the absence of all it traversed.

They were always there…but so were the nightmares. So were the jagged, harsh, obsidian things inside her that clamored and hissed and yammered at her until she gave in and threw her hands over her ears and wept and screamed until the others in this metallic Serenity Valley yelled and shouted and hushed and commanded and Simon came to sit beside her and infuse sleep through the veins that laced her flesh, a safety net that kept her from being completely lost to the visions trying to lead her astray.

It became harder and harder to shake loose the constraints of the _things_ inside her, almost impossible to tell that they were not the reality of existence. Slowly, she learned—learned that if Simon was there, it was real, and if he was not, then she was trapped inside the dangers planted within her. It was one of the reasons she’d so often move to wander through Simon, taking solace in the sanctuary of his clean and orderly rows, his essence a gleaming example of dedication and reason and coherence, all wrapped up in the whisper of her name and the sheer devotion he gave to family, to love, to _River_.

He was a sanctuary, but gradually, as the nightmares grew clearer and stronger and _realer_ than anything else, she began to realize that it was a sanctuary she was sullying, tainting, destroying bit by little bit.

Corpses lived within her. Corpses of dreams and hopes and expectations. The decaying bodies of secrets that should never have been kept, paths that should never have been taken, orders that should never have been given and yet had not been repented. And real, literal cadavers, skeletons that had once laughed and loved and lived yet now were nothing more than premature fertilizer and shadows that blanketed her mind.

Time was non-linear for her; understanding not a daily occurrence; recollection a rare luxury. So she wondered…how many of those people had _she_ killed?

One of them?

Some of them?

Most of them?

All of them?

It was a problem with too many variables, an equation she couldn’t—maybe didn’t want to—solve. The solution was more terrifying than the sight of the corpses and the knowledge that their deadness lived within her, and so she could not answer herself. Was not even sure she tried all that hard to recall whether those bodies had transitioned from people into corpses at her hand or another’s.

Because better to wonder than to know. After all, no fraction as answer to that equation would ever be satisfactory—no solution at all unless it was a clear and unequivocal _zero_.

And River wondered, sometimes, when Simon brushed his hand so gently through her hair, when he wrapped a blanket around her, when he gave her that sweet, carefree smile he reserved only for her…she wondered what would happen to his gleaming rows and dust-free shelves and tidy boxes should he find out that his beloved _mei-mei_ had killed. Would he still hold her hand while she sank into the dreamless sleep he gave her if he discovered that his River had stopped as many hearts from beating as he had worked to ensure _continued_ beating?

Two halves of the same whole.

Light and dark.

Doctor and assassin.

Simon and River.

She was afraid. Afraid that he would stop loving her. Afraid that he would love her still. Afraid, afraid, afraid because all she had was Simon and losing him would rupture her heart—not just the organ, but the thing that made her smile tentatively at the girl she now knew was called _Kaylee_ and soften at _Wash_ and _Zoë_ and fill with wistful yearning at _Mal_ and _Inara_ and respond with answering affection to Simon’s care and concern—and fracture her newfound hold on herself and send her spiraling out into nothingness.

And then there’d only be her. Just one half. Another fraction that could never, ever be enough, never be satisfactory, never be a solution, only another problem.

So she retreated, ran away, hiding behind the ragged, sharp shards that gleamed so malevolently, so deceptively, so darkly. She dared not let Simon close, wasn’t brave enough to risk him catching a glimpse of the dead bodies that lived within her, couldn’t ever find out that he abhorred her. Or worst of all…that he feared her.

Dread suffused her at even the mere thought—though just a thought could so quickly become her reality that maybe it was no wonder at all thoughts could bring her such pain—the mere imagined picture of him flinching away from her, of her brother afraid to enter her room, reluctant to touch her, shunning her presence.

And even if he did not fear her, if he forgave her all and still took her into his arms to calm her fears and wipe away her tears and soothe her sobs, could she really make him her accomplice? Make him into a murderer like her? Already he had held a gun and told himself to pull the trigger; already she had seen that he would give up all that he loved and brave even his most primal fears for her—was it such a stretch to think that he would give up the last of what made him _her_ -Simon in order to follow her, even into madness and murder and chaotic mayhem?

Maybe. She wasn’t coherent enough to know. She only knew that Simon being close was dangerous, and so she pushed him away even as she clung to the remnants of their old life that he granted her. Pushed him away and raged at him and fled the comfort of his touch.

But he didn’t leave. He didn’t retreat. He just kept pace with her, always at her shoulder, always there.

It was frustrating.

It was amazing.

It was agonizing.

It was so characteristically _her_ -Simon, refusing to budge, defying her to ever make him stop loving her, determined to be there for her always.

“I’m not going anywhere, _mei-mei_ ,” he promised her over and over again when a void deeper than the Black’s whispered through her mind and left her trembling and gasping and shaking in terror and a pain that defied definition. “I’m here, River. I’m not going anywhere.”

And he didn’t. Not when she shouted at him. Not when she whined and winced away from the blue-white-silver place where he felt most comfortable. Not when she tossed aside the bag that held so many things he found important, the med-kit that tied him, even so minutely, to the parts of the past he still missed and longed for. Not when she cursed at him and refused his comfort and ranted against the physical help he sought to give her.

The serene firefly in which they took refuge gave them anonymity and safety, but it cut her off from sunlight and blue skies and the smell of growing things. It amplified the voices and made them echo and resound deafeningly in her ears. It made her forget that she was free now, that she didn’t have to be afraid anymore, that the fears within her weren’t stronger than the bond between her and Simon.

By the time she remembered that, when old souls became what they were meant to be and the wind and the sun caressed her and reminded her feet that they could dance, she had already hurt Simon, already weakened and wearied him, already pushed him away and left him isolated and solitary, distanced from the others who constantly whispered at her in _Serenity_ , alienated by the fears that swallowed her up only to vomit her back out only to swallow her yet again in an endless, useless cycle.

And yet…

He laughed when she danced.

Despite all she had done to drive him away from the nightmares that sought to devour everything good, he still smiled so proudly at her graceful movements.

She thought that was what reminded her of who she really was. All his irritation and exhaustion and growing despair was erased, swept away by the rushing rapids that was her when she let the music take hold of her and send her flying and whirling and tapping and flinging herself through open air just to remind herself that she was free, just to prove to her body that there weren’t any boundaries and confines. He watched her and he smiled and he laughed, and she remembered just how long it had been since last she’d heard him laugh so freely.

And then, snapping the moment like a rotted cord, casting ominous overtones like the silence that fell after the last rumbling of thunder, she felt cold lead endanger the beating heart of one of hers, felt life teeter on a precipice, felt the one called _Book_ waver and weaken and wash away.

But…but _she_ had been dancing, and her hands had been caught in the hold of another warm body wanting to feel alive with the music, and she couldn’t see the Shepherd with her eyes…and so she knew, jubilantly, triumphantly, that she had not been the one to strike him down.

So maybe…maybe she hadn’t killed the others either. Maybe the images had been plants designed to grow in her, fester with roots that threatened to choke out _Simon’s_ -River, poison with leaves that wormed their way through her and blocked off the light of her brother, hypnotize and enchant and deceive with flowering buds that lured her away from everything good and right and whole. _They_ were cunning and manipulative, and suddenly it made sense to her—though that didn’t, she was sometimes aware, always mean much—that they would have implanted a failsafe to keep her separate, to mark her as their own.

They had tricked her, but it wasn’t too late; she could take care of Simon just like he took care of her. Everything he did, every move he made, every word he said, every thought he had, all of it proved his love for her—he hadn’t said the words again, she thought, not since she had missed the cues he’d given her and skipped a step and forgotten that she was supposed to say the important words back to him, but he showed it to her constantly, ceaselessly.

So she would too.

She played hide-and-seek with him in the dappled forest, laughing at his surprised horror that she found him so easily and resisting when he tried to cheat and push her back to give him more time to hide. She told his name to the others they met and assured them that he was a good doctor, doing her best to wipe away any hurt he might still hold over her refutation of his medical help. She brought him berries to let him know that she remembered _his_ -River and the moments and days and years she had shared with _her_ -Simon. And seeing him selflessly cure and heal those who threatened him, seeing him as brilliant as she had always known he was, she wept. For the first time, she wept not for herself, not for the corpses buried inside her, not for the nightmares eating her alive from the inside out, not for the River-that-had-been.

For the first time, she wept for Simon.

She might not have killed anyone, might have only imagined the rapid glimpses of violence and terror and brutality within her, but she had stolen Simon from the life that had been his, had ripped him from what fate ordained and cast him to the winds of chance, had threatened the perfection of the rows through which she loved to wander.

Yet he ate the berries and he laughed with her and he did not shrink away from her touch—indeed, seemed to welcome it—and in his acceptance, there was some for herself, some form of absolution. Because if Simon was there, at her side, then not everything was wrong with the ‘verse.

Everything was perfect, in fact, for that moment. A moment that stretched out seamlessly, blending in with the other indistinguishable amounts of time between sleeping and fearing and waking and wandering, a moment when there was just her and _her_ -Simon and they were once more safe, enshrined in their private chrysalis. Needles tried to pierce her with Simon’s discomfort and guilt and harsh, blinding _grief_ when she told him Daddy would come for them, but that pain faded quickly, dwindling away like mist to leave the perfection once more clear and sharp.

But even a chrysalis could be endangered and harmed by those who interfered with its development, outsiders who poked at the cocoon and played sadistically with it, stealing it from its place of safety and dangling it over the fire.

It was strange, so strange, that people told her things, showed her things, and then screamed and shivered and condemned when she spoke those things aloud. Voices surrounded her constantly, swirling about her head, dancing around her so that she had to wade through them just to take a step forward.

She thought, sometimes, when the shards of glass were near enough together for her to think with some form of confluence, that she had been hearing the constant, ceaseless voices since the hands of blue had pierced her and shrieked at her and whispered their phrases and whispers and secret statements in her ears. Waking from the cold to Simon’s warmth, the blanket of confusion that swaddled and suffocated her had kept the voices always just slightly out of reach. She—maybe, occasionally—remembered the screams she’d heard when Simon had insisted there was no sound to break the stillness of the Black and knew she had wondered how she heard their screams when she found their bodies already strung up like lights on a Christmas tree, once all merry and happy and festive, now dead and cold and useless now that the holiday was over and life with it.

But it wasn’t until Simon studied her with that same expression he’d worn during the first of her dance recitals he’d attended and told the interfering outsiders, “River’s always been…intuitive,” and held her hand protectively in his to counter the images portrayed by the girl whose voice had been broken…it wasn’t until then that she realized the voices weren’t really voices at all.

A voice was the sound produced by moving breath and thought through the larynx, and the ‘voices’ that constantly afflicted and assailed her…they weren’t ever issued through a larynx, weren’t given _voice_ at all.

They were secret. Silent. Private. Intimate.

They were thoughts.

She wandered through Simon’s mind, walked the rows of his thoughts, trailed her fingers over the shelves of his memories and hopes and dreams and experiences and knowledge, noted her influence on his very life.

She heard the _voiceless_ thoughts of all those that came around her. Peered into their most private corners. Eavesdropped on their own, solitary thoughts. Saw the secrets they never wanted anyone else to know.

It seemed so obvious once she realized it that it seemed she had always known, and maybe she had. Maybe calling them ‘voices’ had just been  a way to make it easier for her to live with them every minute of every day. Maybe it had been a way of hiding what had been done to her, what they had changed and altered and mutated until she was no more than a broken shell of herself, only tiny splinters left to remind her of what and who she had once been.

Simon was proud of her intuition—though she knew, from her tours taken through his comforting psyche, that he understood what she did, had tucked that suspicion, that idea, away deep in a tiny corner of a high shelf, packing it in carefully with hushed, urgent whispers of _Captain Reynolds will never let us stay if he finds out_ and _He’ll throw us off_ and _We’ll be completely alone—how will I protect her_?

Simon was proud, but the masses of angry screams that never entered the open air…they weren’t. They didn’t see her the way Simon did, didn’t call her _mei-mei_ , didn’t love her unconditionally. They saw her as the unknown, the unfamiliar, the dangerous, the mystical.

And out of their mouths leapt fire that burned away the last of the cold burrowed deep in her bones, the cold Simon had used to secret her away from The Academy. Out of their minds leapt blood-drenched, terror-cursed, murder-riddled thoughts—filled with all the secrets they did not want her to know—to claw at her and momentarily wipe away all else, and she could not help but scream.

Their hands closed around her, dragging her with none of the tenderness apparent in Simon’s hands when he guided her from place to place, their faces closed and cruel and transparent, and suddenly she was back in the cell _they_ had locked her in, helpless to do anything but wait there for _them_ to return and drag her back to the unknown, to the dreams that promised normality and delivered horror, to the hands of blue that dug deep inside her and _altered_ River into the broken, shattered half-person she was now.

She fought the masses, but carefully, cautiously, all too aware of the bodies inside her, wary of adding more, desperate to prove to herself that she had not been the one to strike down the corpses that populated her own mind. They combated her easily, and then she was drowning beneath their thoughts, their murderous intent, their irrational fear. She had thought herself insane, but now… _now_ she knew insanity. Now it burned her and blistered her flesh and chafed her wrists and engulfed her in searing heat.

And with cold calm, the orderly, quiet rows that were Simon suddenly flared with lightning-edged intensity, the shelves a diamond-sharp barricade, the boxes opened and redistributed so that the meager amounts of knowledge Simon possessed about combat and negotiation and desperation were now in the forefront. In an instant, the quiet sanctuary to which she so often fled had become a fortress that crackled and burned and _seethed_ like the vortex in a lightning storm. And River stood there in the center of this strong, vulnerable citadel, in the very eye of the storm, and tried to add her scant, flickering strength to his.

“Take me instead—take my life for hers,” Simon said, and when that did not work, he set aside those plans and looked for some other weapon, some other shield. But there was no time because the flames danced around her and lit her dress to a rosy shade that reminded her of a blanket her mother had given her when she’d been quite small, a quilt Simon had packed away with him and given her and now, in part, carried with him in a pocket close to his heart.

The flames didn’t yet touch the wood, but they burned like incandescent suns in Simon’s eyes, set ablaze the cold fury turning the floors of his usually calm sanctuary into frost, coursed like searing ice through his veins.

“Get away from her!” Negotiation was forgotten in exchange for the bits of fighting expertise locked inside him, fueled more by resolve and fierce will and panicked terror than any real knowledge, though…though there were glimpses in some of the boxes knocked aside in his haste, glimpses of memories she’d had no part in, flashes of dark nights in Blackout zones, of physically negotiating for information and clues, of altercations with foolish thugs who saw only a rich doctor and not the implacable brother on a quest to save his sister.

Simon struck out with fists, with accusations, with denunciations, but it wasn’t enough. Fire couldn’t be stopped by arguments; fanaticism dressed in a mockery of religion couldn’t be deterred by a few punches.

She— _River_ —looked out at the spectators and listened to their voices, their murmured thoughts, saw in their eyes an image of a thin girl tied to a stake, eyes blank, expression unafraid, her brother standing defiant and unarmed and outnumbered in front of her, an inferno that had flared so quickly and now began to calm and soothe beneath her gentle touch all apparent in his shadowed eyes as his hands gradually began to unclench.

Backwards he stepped, moving on faith and devotion, and River swelled, grew, solidified beneath the enormity, the simultaneous complexity and simplicity, the _entirety_ of his love. The gaps between the shards of glass that comprised her seemed to shrink and dwindle, a few splinters merging one with another, a handful of nightmares disintegrating in a puff of smoke.

River pitied the villagers around her, felt a rush of condescension at their utter blindness. Because they couldn’t see, couldn’t understand the unwavering, stalwart opponent before them, the lithe and deadly danger of the one they called witch…the approaching _voices_ of those she had grown used to since being returned to the circle of Simon’s arms.

The fire in Simon died away as he looked up to meet her eyes, replaced by the violet and silver lightning that edged every line, every corner, every shadow of his mind, intensity and ferocity and resolve. Each box was carefully packed away again, placed in their slots on the shelves, order and reason returned and then proven biased and perhaps illogical when every thought he had led him to one, surely flawed conclusion.

There was no escape.

He hadn’t been able to protect her.

He wouldn’t— _couldn’t_ —leave her.

They would die, together.

And she smiled at him, a real, unchained smile, as easy and free as the laughter when he’d made a face at her berries, as simple and unburdened as those she had given him in the days and years—seeming almost mythical now—before The Academy. Smiled at him even though she was bound to a post buried in the hungry ground and tried to tell him she loved him, the three words he wouldn’t admit he longed for, the declaration she’d been long overdue to make.

“Post-holer. For digging holes for posts.”

Odd. Those words didn’t sound like the ones she’d meant to speak, seemed different in some way she didn’t take the time to ponder, because they seemed to be enough for Simon.

His own smile was tiny, almost indiscernible, but then, he didn’t know what she did, couldn’t feel the metal shell of _Serenity_ drawing so near, hadn’t heard the words she had meant to say, had thought she said. He didn’t understand…and yet, he understood more than it seemed he should. Or maybe he just trusted her. Maybe he didn’t know how to do otherwise. He’d followed her trail of written breadcrumbs, had rescued her from the darkness she couldn’t, even now, comprehend, had remained patient while she allowed fear to control her, and now there was nothing for him to do but climb up beside her and wrap his arms once more around her.

She sank into his touch— _his_ touch, the only physical contact she could endure, even welcome, because she didn’t mind if _his_ voice became louder, became all she could hear—her own chaotic thoughts fluttering before his quiet, calm resignation, anticipating the flurry of wind and noise and shock that would roll through the town like an earthquake.

“Time to go,” she told Simon, and felt his breath caress her cheek as the lights began to dim over the rows and rows that were _him_ just before her predictions came true—the astonished, resentful, terrified thoughts of the interfering outsiders almost deafening her—and he once more gleamed with white and silver light that chased away the black of the night and the garish hues of the threatened flames.

Daddy hadn’t come for them, but home had.

\---


	3. Decipher

\---

The disconnect between intent and speech puzzled her. It was a perplexing problem, one she took out often to run through her hands so she could study it from every angle, one that frustrated and angered her and wearied and worried Simon. He heard the words she spoke, but the problem was that very rarely were the uttered words what she meant to say. They were birthed in one shard of glass-that-was-her, but in translating them from splinter to shard to slice, they became garbled and unclear.

It frightened her, the precariousness of the situation. She had escaped those who rummaged and rearranged the contents of her head and soul by writing to her brother, hiding codes in stories that had never been and jokes that weren’t funny and anecdotes that never happened. It had been a desperate ploy, one founded on faith in her brother and his love for her, his brilliance for solving puzzles, his reckless determination, but the ploy should have been over and done with once he followed her clues and rescued her. It should have faded into the past instead of lingering on into the present, and yet linger it did. Everything she said came out wrong, the truth and meaning hidden in codes that Simon tried so hard to decipher.

She was trapped. Simon had taken her out of The Academy, but she was still locked away, imprisoned in a cell they had crafted for her inside her own head. She reached for him through the bars, but he felt only butterfly touches, saw only slight glimmers, heard only echoes of her screams.

But how could she blame him for not understanding when so often she didn’t understand what _he_ said? Sometimes she looked at him, and she saw his lips moving, and she tried so very hard to focus on what he was saying, but he was too far away, his words too muffled and foreign, his touch too vivid for her to concentrate on whatever message he was trying to pass on.

And it was hard, almost impossibly so, to figure out which things were spoken aloud and which were whispered into her mind alone, especially when the two were so different. Sometimes, she wasn’t even sure she had matched the right voices with the right name. Was Kaylee thinking about the time she’d spent in a monastery? Was the captain the one who reminisced about a planet where the sky was veiled? Did Inara remember a battle where only a sergeant and loyalty had gotten her through alive?

It was a jigsaw puzzle, one with no pictures or frame of reference, constantly jumbled and mixed up and horribly confused in her mind so that the only one she knew for sure, without thinking or looking or wondering, was Simon; she could pinpoint his thoughts and voice and recognize them instantly as _her_ -Simon, a calming ability she could use with none of the other souls bound together in this cocoon of _Serenity_.

She drifted, apart from them, sometimes mingling and intersecting with their world, other times only passing through ethereally. Simon kept her grounded, an anchor that always brought her back, chaotic and scared and shaking, but inevitably, she’d drift off again, and her cries for help, her whimpers of loneliness, her screams of fear…they went unnoticed, hidden in a mountain of gibberish and jargon and nonsense that spilled from her lips like blood.

There was too much noise, mayhem all about her, and individual syllables got lost in the clamor. But there was something worse than that, something that made the assaulting hubbub seem a refuge.

Silence.

Complete and utter silence.

It pressed on her from all sides, hungry to consume the sounds that emanated from her—the beat of her heart, the inflation of her lungs, the roar of the blood moving through her veins…the whisper of her brother’s pulse, tucked away in her mind for safekeeping.

Terrible, horrible silence. The silence of nothing. The silence of death. The silence of…peace?

She broke the silence by starting up from her bed with a shriek that rent the pseudo-night and cast sparkles into the darkness. The silence was too oppressive and the thrum of _Serenity’s_ own heartbeat wasn’t enough, so she wept aloud and screamed again and sobbed violently, anything to prove to the voices and the darkness and the silence that she would not lie down, that she would fight and struggle, that she would make noise no matter how the seeming deafness afflicting her tried to smother everything that was _her_.

The sounds she made faded so quickly, a too-thin veneer of defiance spread too far over her wide expanse of terror. They protested the silence, claimed boldness, challenged the encroaching enemy, but in reality—a shifting, nebulous realm she only vaguely touched anymore—in reality, she was so tired of fighting, so exhausted and drained from screaming in the cells where no one could hear her, so horribly, terribly afraid of what years more of an existence like this one would mean. One day, maybe today, maybe years from now—either way, it hardly mattered since time slipped her by like the abstract concept it was—she would surrender to the silence, succumb to the deafness of the ‘verse, shrink away into nothing.

But not this moment. Because Simon’s heartbeat grew louder, and his noise joined with hers to fight off the silence for an unspecific amount of time, his lungs filling and emptying of air, his blood pulsing through his veins with a steady beat she might wish to dance to later, his voice daring to brave the silence, entering it and shooing away the vast nothingness threatening to engulf her, his sleeves brushing and rustling against her as he wrapped her in his strong, strengthening embrace.

“Nothing,” she babbled, trying to explain why she was screaming, why she had pulled him from the sleep that the shadows threatening to obscure his eyes whispered he needed. “Nothing, only silence—it stops everything it touches, makes you forget to breathe, forget…and she forgets so easily, how can she scare it away?”

“Shh, _mei-mei_ , it’s all right. I’m here. It’s me, Simon. I’m here, River.”

She hated the uncertainty in his eyes while he waited for her to drag herself away from the cloying grip of her nightmares, hated the tiny spiders skittering through his clean and quiet thoughts, the ones that wondered if she recognized him, wondered if she’d meet his eyes and know him, the ones that left behind little cobwebs of hurt and fear and stinging pain that his beloved sister, _his_ -River, could look right through him as if he didn’t exist, as if she’d never seen him before, as if all the years where she had been fixed in the forefront of his mind didn’t matter, had never even happened.

She hated that uncertainty even more because as much as she might rage and shout that she would never forget him, that she had kept fast, secret hold of him during all those days when secrets were burned into her and wounds were dug into her and scars were gouged out of her—as much as she denied that she would never look through him, she knew that the denial was as thin and wasted as her defiance of the silence. Knew that in a locked box hidden beneath happier, larger boxes, Simon kept the memories of the times she had looked through him, walked past him, fought him, screamed at him without name, associated him with her tormentors.

“Simon,” she said, and was pleased when that came out ungarbled, clear and concise. She recognized him. She knew him. She loved him.

Relief turned gray eyes to blue, a shade of blue that did not frighten her but rather calmed her. Content that they were Simon and River—not doctor and patient, not stranger and lunatic—he settled himself on the edge of her bed, his long fingers pushing back the hair falling before her own eyes.

“Too quiet,” she whimpered, tangling both of her hands around one of his, the one straightening the blankets around her. He hadn’t turned the light on when he’d sleepily rushed to her aid, and only the little light he always left on for her illuminated them, but it was enough, more than enough. She had lived without light for…for a long time. Now, even the tiniest drop of luminosity could sustain her, a rich delicacy she knew better than to take for granted. “It’s too quiet, always trying to swallow me up. Don’t let it take me, Simon, don’t let it eat me. It’s like the Black, all-encompassing and too vast for any mind to comprehend. You slide through it and don’t realize it can destroy you. But there aren’t any stars. It’s just…nothing.”

He trickled cool fingers across her brow, comforting and checking all at once, multi-tasking as he was prone to do despite his propensity for single-minded fixation. “I thought you loved the Black, River. I thought it helped you.”

She was trying so hard to speak clearly that it frustrated her he couldn’t see what she was saying. A huff of breath escaped her and she rolled her eyes. “The Black has stars. The silence doesn’t.”

“Ahh.” Simon looked away, a quick flick of his eyes, before he was looking back at her and offering a wan smile. “I’m sorry, River. I’m trying to understand.”

And suddenly it occurred to her that she _wasn’t_ being clear, that her words had been disconnected from her intent again, that he was once more left behind, struggling valiantly to read the message hidden in the multitude of useless words. She had to try harder, had to work at this, had to decipher why she couldn’t reliably convey all that she wanted so badly to tell him.

“Don’t understand,” she pleaded with him, half-rising and bringing her hands to the collar of his soft sweater. “Please, Simon, don’t! They’ll cut you open and hurt you and change you and you won’t be _my_ -Simon anymore. You’ll be broken, and only one of us can be broken. How can the whole be strong enough if _both_ halves are flawed? I don’t want you to understand!”

“Hey.” His fingers moved to her chin, steadying her, grounding her, the lodestar that kept her vaguely pointed in the right direction. “Don’t say that, River. You’re not flawed. They may have hurt you, but you are beautiful and brilliant and much, much too good for them.”

The slight tug at her lips surprised her because smiles were almost as rare as light to shatter the darkness, but this smile birthed light, gleaming illumination filtering through the abandoned rows inside his head, opening up boxes to call up happy memories of days when his _mei-mei_ had followed him everywhere and grabbed his hand to pull him into a fun dance while their parents laughed at them or when they spoke together for hours about anything and everything, the secrets of the universe—all of them good and fun and wonderful, not dark and twisted and _wrong_ —laid out before them, anything they wanted theirs for the taking.

_Broken_ -River faded into the background, and for this little pocket of un-time, _his_ -River firmed and solidified and moved forward to take the spotlight created by his flicker of joy.

“ _Ge-ge_ ,” she said fondly, and basked in his spreading, unfurling light.

He stayed with her until she felt sleep tug at her, bidding her to come and play with it, promising the nightmares had gone for this night, bullied away by Simon’s stalwart presence.

A kiss was pressed to her temple, the blankets smoothed over her shoulders, and then, as if it were as easy as breathing, he whispered, “I love you, _mei-mei_.”

Startled, pleased, she hushed sleep’s impatient murmurs and turned back to her brother. “Simon, you’re loud.”

His eyes widened, and though he clearly tried to hide it, a grin played along the edges of his mouth. “Really?”

“You chase the quiet away. It wants everything to be silent, wants to hush blood and air and movement, but you make it okay to breathe and live and smile. She can rest now.”

For an instant, she thought the wrong words must have slipped from her lips yet again, but then he blinked away a shimmer and smiled so softly, so gently, so tenderly and pulled her into a quick hug. And then, for once, it looked as if he were the one who could not find the right words to say, so he just smiled and murmured, “Rest well, River,” and held her hand until she laughed and gave in to sleep’s blatant invitation.

It encouraged her that she had managed to say what she meant, to convey what she intended, to pass along the messages she had composed in her mind. With such success still prevalent in the scattered remnants of _her_ , it seemed a good idea to tell him, now, the words she had been wanting to say to him since well before he had come to rescue her, the words that had gotten stuck in her throat when he’d hugged her farewell as she left for The Academy, the words she hadn’t written in the letters because she’d wanted their absence to draw his attention, the words that had come out as something altogether different when he’d stepped into immolation for her.

The measurements used to divide increments of time always slithered away from her, always just out of reach when she grabbed for them, taunting her with their elusiveness, but she thought it was not much later, not much after the night when Simon watched the others leave _Serenity_ with a wistful look on his face that had emerged again for a moment when they heard laughing and music and singing outside in a fire-lit village before the bittersweet expression metamorphosed into a quiet smile and a laugh—and it pained her that laughing had become so unfamiliar to him lately—when she’d taken his hand and made him dance in the cargo bay, just like she’d done in the memory he’d taken out to examine by light of her smile during the night.

The captain returned from the haze of smoke and fire and flowers and fake rain with a thief for a wife, nobility rising within him as if awakening from a restless slumber in response to her quiet deception and soft-spoken manipulation. The snake’s presence was like an itch in River’s mind, a thorn no one else could see, a disease that would not, she determined, poison Simon. The captain could defend himself and Wash had Zoë and the Shepherd had faith and Jayne was not a tempting enough target, but Simon was too trusting, too naïve, too distractible, and far too large a target now because of River.

For someone little affected by time, it was ironic that she should be inconvenienced by bad timing, but she was. She had been so close to finally getting out the much-delayed words, to actually getting to soothe some of the wounds she’d unknowingly inflicted on Simon, but now she had to protect him from the serpent in their midst too. It was hard, sometimes, being a sister, but she supposed it was worth it, over all.

Pillows seemed the quickest solution to that problem. If the false wife couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t stay, and it was hard to sleep without pillows—River knew from experience, remembered insurmountable problems with mattresses and pillows at The Academy. But the Shepherd was persistent, and every time she took away a pillow, he found a new one, until finally she had to reach out for Simon’s sleeve and lead him forward to explain the problem.

Two birds with one stone. She couldn’t remember where the saying had originated, maybe on Earth-that-was, but it seemed to apply here. Speak the words she longed to say right and get rid of the pesky thief problem, all in one forcedly casual conversation. It was a solid plan; she didn’t know what went wrong.

A flawed marriage, one that couldn’t exist, for reasons too numerous to mention—a warning that all was not right—a declaration that she loved him. She even managed to denounce the serpent to her falsely downcast face.

But it didn’t work.

The captain couldn’t see past the lowered eyelashes, the Shepherd couldn’t see past his fixation on comfort and care, and Simon…Simon missed the code so clearly spelled out amidst the stories that had never been and the jokes that weren’t funny and the anecdotes that had never happened. He missed it, didn’t realize what she had told him, didn’t hear her promise to take care of him as adeptly and determinedly as he took care of her, didn’t understand why she had combined her declaration with her warning that all was not right, that the situation was nothing more than a deception and a mask as simple as a pillow under a shirt.

He missed it…but he told her he loved her back.

“ _Mei-mei_ , of course I love you too,” he said, effortlessly, easily, almost without thought, as natural as breathing. She had always—she thought _always_ , but maybe not, maybe there were missing moments, missing memories, missing motives—looked up to Simon, always admired him, but in that instant she envied him. Envied him his ease and his skill and his dreamless sleep, and though she didn’t wish her fate on him—never, never, please God, _never_ —she did wonder if she had once known that same smoothness and lucidity and certainty. She wondered if she would ever know it again, if Simon would be able to give it to her, slide it back under her skin with the liquids that cooled and calmed and caressed her.

That night, for the first time, she only pretended to have nightmares, screamed not because she had startled out of sleep, but because she wanted Simon in the room with her, wanted him safe next to her. She had hidden away his half of their memento far away to keep it safe, but this time only proximity to her could protect her brother from the temptress waiting to ensnare him should she ever see him and focus on him and recognize in him a mark worth bringing in and turning over for filthy lucre.

Eventually, lulled by her complacency, stayed by her hand so tightly gripping his, he fell asleep leaned up against her bed. She ran her fingers softly through his hair and winced when she realized that his sleep was not as dreamless as all that, not free of fear and pain and grief, and she hummed a tiny tune and traced trembling fingers over his brow and soothed away the nightmares from him.

For a moment, empowered and emboldened by her ability to drive back darkness and protect her brother, River—yes, once again, for this instant, fully River—thought that her own nightmares could be banished, her terrors driven back, her sleep reclaimed. For a moment, she thought she and Simon could actually resurrect _his_ -River from the dead and stitch all of the gleaming shards-of-her back together to make something whole and full and real.

It was an invigorating feeling, a breathless thought, a powerful concept, and though it eventually drifted away into the fog that moved to wrap her in liquid arms and sweep her down the road of incoherency, she thought that maybe a tiny trace of it lingered in the air, settled like a fine dust over the broken shards, coated her skin, ready to be resurrected again when Simon returned after a long absence that had panicked her with the possibility that he might never return, that this had all been a trick designed by her tormentors. She was so afraid of that possibility, so distracted by the niggling terror that Simon wasn’t really there at all, that symbols and snow-covered roofs and Shepherds took on more importance than they perhaps really possessed.

But Simon came back, and he smiled at her, and she couldn’t help but blink at him in astonishment.

He had been turned inside out.

His blood was on the outside, his skin turned inward, the structure of his form made unstable, inverted, turned backward. It disgusted and thrilled her at the same time, and she didn’t know why, didn’t know how the condition had struck, didn’t know what she could do to help him.

“Simon!” she blurted, half-raising a hand to him, caught between a desire to touch him and the instinctual urge to recoil from the blood so exposed. It made her strangely sad to see him like this, to know that even turned inside out, he still smiled and shone and glistened with that inner light, edged with lightning. It seemed to her that she had been turned inside out too, hands reaching inside her, grasping hold of her center and pulling it outward until she had been inverted too, _his_ -River now curled up and whimpering, frozen in stasis, on the inside, while on the outside, the corpses and nightmares and terrors and secrets were revealed for all who looked at her to see.

“Did you miss me, River?” he asked her, as if he did not realize that now they matched in more ways than one.

“Not my fault,” she told him succinctly, finally chancing a touch, ghosting her fingers over the paths along his cheek and lip and temple where the skin had parted to reveal what lay within.

He let out a tiny chuckle. “No, River, not your fault. This was all Jayne’s fault—the whole town thought he was a hero, and one of his…former business partners…took umbrage at that opinion.”

“People make their own heroes,” she whispered, while inwardly, she grinned in triumph and snicked into place the cloying voices whispering of _regret_ and _doubt_ and _confusion_ and _Why’d he go and jump in front of me?_ with the one called _Jayne_. Every day, she grew closer to being able to tell without doubt which voiceless voices went to which breathing life-form appearing at the dinner table so often.

“Yes, I think they do. You always have an answer for everything, don’t you, _mei-mei_?” Simon grinned at her and touched her shoulder in an almost-hug. When she peeked into the shelves that marked his thoughts, she saw them glowing with reflected amber lights, like the heart of _Serenity_. He had just been speaking to Kaylee—she had marked him with white lines bandaged across the rents in his flesh and trailing golden streamers floating through the rows of shelves and the white grin he had reclaimed.

“Don’t touch me,” she commanded, and stepped away from his hand.

His grin melted away, replaced by a trace of hurt. “River? What’s wrong?”

“It leaches light from everything she touches. Don’t get near it or all the streamers will disappear. Only duty will be left, stripped of joy.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, a little sadly. She had tried to save him, tried to let him nurture the gold within, but it was draining away anyway, the warm amber tones that softened his intense, stormy hues replaced with echoes of the black shadows that followed in River’s footsteps, haunted the places she would go, left behind a taint on all that she touched.

“Leave me alone!” she screamed at him, enraged suddenly. “Don’t touch, don’t touch, don’t touch! A museum piece, shown to the highest bidders, taken out like a toy. Put her back on the shelf, turn off the lights, forget she’s there, but she stays, hidden deep down—don’t make a sound!”

“Oh, River.” An exhalation, a lament, an outpouring of compassion.

The warmth from Kaylee was completely gone from him, and it was such a sad feeling, a sad thought, a sad touch in his mind, that she began to weep, tears leaking from her, a river whose source was _his_ -River buried so incredibly deep and yet still mourning for all that had been lost.

“Simon, I stole all the gold,” she murmured, and clung to him when he tentatively took her into his arms. “I stole it and now you’ll have to go back for more, but you can’t because the walls are too high.”

She thought she remembered a feeling of empowerment, of hope, but it was too far gone, maybe only a dream, or the memory of a dream, and so she leaned on Simon, needing his strength, craving his resolve, basking in his love.

A blink, a shift in position and time and temperament, and there were tiny pinpricks of light shining in the darkness, symbols of years that had passed, only some of which she remembered. More pinpricks of light, bubbles glowing with individual colors and thoughts and voices, surrounding the cake where glowed the candles combating the darkness and representing the years of life that saved her from total despair and a descent into madness unhalted by his hand grasping hers. Eight individuals, eight voices, eight people…and her. Alone, isolated, different, broken.

“I didn’t get you anything,” she informed him solemnly, an unnecessary statement because surely he already knew that. The last gift she could remember giving him had been a blue sweater she had told him would keep him warm at MedAcad, and the red medkit she had pulled out to give him only after he made a show of being pleased with the sweater. Since then, she had given him only intransient things, abstract concepts that bound him in concrete chains—the life of a fugitive, the loneliness of a person trapped between the crew and his sister, the infrequent smiles that infused him with strength and hope whenever they snuck their way past the barricade left by torment and shattered sleep.

Simon’s light glowed brighter as he looked away from the candles, upward into Kaylee’s face, around at the smiling, happy faces of the people he often thought cared little for him or resented him for the trouble he brought to their home. There was something tender and slender and kinder in his being, something that made carpets appear between the shelves of his life, tapestries decorate the walls, a crooked cake with multi-colored chocolate sit proudly in a highly visible corner beneath a captured snapshot image of the generosity, the acceptance surrounding him, even Jayne with his finger in the frosting. Even River with a fledgling smile playing around her lips, making her look real, making her look happy.

And she was.

Simon was happy, so she was happy.

Two halves of the same whole, and maybe it wasn’t doctor and assassin, after all. Maybe it was just doctor and patient.

“Fire,” she warned him, pleased when the warning came out and Kaylee was saved and _Serenity_ survived to fly another day, to shelter her ragged vagabonds through another trip throughout the Rim, to beat steadily and grant all within the safety of her exoskeleton a pocket of home, small and self-contained and so infinitely fragile.

Another blink and it was brightly lit again, the air full and free in her mouth, bits of the outside air entering her flesh to sit within her before she exhaled them out, like the things put inside her except there was no easy way to take those out, to expel them back out into the air, to separate them from her own self, nothing to do but let them sit and fester inside her, walls that kept her from truly being a part of the crew laughing and playing and talking.

They were laughing, yes, smiling, enjoying themselves, teeth flashing in an age-old expression signifying _safety, pleasure, amusement_ , and yet there was so little real happiness evident. She could see it, feel it, hear it, each smile only a paper-thin mask, stretched to the point of tearing.

Inara, talking of laws and examinations, too afraid to examine herself beneath her Companion exterior, too reluctant to fully inoculate herself to the allure of this life, too shaken by just how deeply she’d fallen into blue eyes and a roguish grin and a spirit of nobility not fully obscured by cynicism, her thoughts all calm and centered above a roiling mass of doubts.

The captain, watching the ones he so reluctantly and so quickly took under his wing and sheltered, so afraid of admitting he cared for them yet caring too much to deny that he did, tired after tossing and turning with nightmares of losing everything again, having this _Serenity_ ripped from him as surely as he’d had the last taken away, his victories turned to ash and blood in his mouth.

Zoë and Wash, their minds full of different things—one fixated on blue skies and open spaces and bioluminescent lakes, the other on home and refuge and staying far away from planets bought and paid for with the blood of her comrades—yet each reflecting bits of the other, Wash’s thoughts tinged with silken laughter and slow smiles and smooth skin, Zoë’s sprinkled with dinosaurs and twinkling eyes and arms with a strength far beyond the physical.

Kaylee, so quiet and reserved, her smiles banked, her shine dimmed just the slightest bit, and River wondered if anyone else noticed how Kaylee sat where she could watch Simon, sat away from him, watching him, studying him, looking at him and wishing he would talk to her as easily as _Serenity_ did, wishing she could bring back the smiles he’d shown her when they’d talked about manners and swearing, wishing his birthday had ended oh so differently, wondering all the while if all her looks and smiles and optimism would ever make Simon look at her with just a hint of the devotion he showed his sister.

Simon, unaware, oblivious, forcing himself to eat the bowl of foul-smelling food he’d made for her, pretending to himself that he belonged at this table, this ship, this life, trying to change the shape and style of his shelves to accept _Serenity_ even as he kept everything packed, ready to move on should the captain abandon them just like Daddy had, just like his money and position and career had.

And Jayne…he was the unhappiest of all, even surrounded by gleaming, sharp edges, fondling and playing with the weapons that made him think he was strong. Throwing randomly aimed weapons of words at Simon to hide his envy, his distrust, his resentment, laughing and spitting because it made everyone around him underestimate him just a bit even though it seemed to him that everyone had grown just a bit too used to dismissing and overlooking him. The blood that had stained his hands, the blood of a young boy who’d looked up to him as a hero, still painted his thoughts with a dark and rosy hue, but it frightened him, and so he hardened himself, pretended it didn’t matter at all, eager for a chance to prove to himself—and to Mal—that he hadn’t grown soft or weak or vulnerable.

_When the money’s good enough_ …

It flitted through his cluttered, straightforward mind, never too far away, never alighting for long. And yet…there was danger there. Danger, and she could smell it as surely as she could taste the food in the bowl Simon had given her, a scent just as bad and twice as pervasive, a scent that made it hard for her to breathe, clinging to her nostrils so that she thought she might choke.

Simon had promised her he’d find them a safe place, and he was just beginning to think that _Serenity_ might actually be that place, but the silver edges of Jayne’s knives gleamed, and in their reflection River saw pain and terror and _wrongness_ given shape and form and weapon in her, and the shards-that-were-her shimmered with that reflected light, magnifying and amplifying them until she was consumed with _danger! danger! danger!_ and blue hands coming toward her, gleaming with blue-white-silver in the shape of a crude sun.

She was only a reflection and the gleaming sharp blade was in her hand because there was one in Jayne’s hand, the thought of revenge and envy and resentment in her head because it was in Jayne’s, and the cold blue was clothing her because it clothed Jayne. And the red…the red, rosy hues left by a man’s sacrifice for something he believed greater than himself, it was the only hope River could see in that instant, the only good thing still visible through the blue and silver glare rising off all the serrated edges.

She tried to explain that— _He looks better in red_ —but no one heard her past the glare reflecting off the broken glass.

Not even Simon.

Horror and shock and terrible, crushing helplessness, all of it swirling around and through and inside him…but no fear. At least, not fear _of_ her, which was enough for her to let him touch her and wash the blood from her mouth and guide her slowly to her room.

“Don’t be mad,” she pleaded with him when he wanted to leave her, needle and thread already prepared in his mind to mend the little bit of hope River had carved out in Jayne.

Simon stopped at the door, his back turned to her, his shoulders slumped just the slightest bit, and inside…inside, he was already double-checking everything to make sure it was all packed and ready to go, already pulling out maps and plans of where they might go from here, already trying to let go of the things he had grown to like, trying to hide away the crooked birthday cake and admiring glances from Kaylee and calm solace from Inara and friendship from Wash and the rare looks of approval he so treasured receiving from Mal. Shadows cloaked all the boxes she loved to look through when she remembered that she was _River_ and yet found it hard to catch hold of her own memories.

“Don’t be mad,” she whispered again, curling in on herself, hating the blue tint to everything she looked at.

“I’m…I’m not mad, River.” His shoulders dipped lower and he leaned his forehead against the door, his surgeon’s hands empty and tense at his sides. She thought she had never seen him look so defeated before. “I just…I wish there was some way I could help you.”

“The blue sun was burning a hole through him—I had to let it out!” she explained, a hint of desperation touching her voice, flavoring it with more seasoning than their food held. And then, in that moment, she _couldn’t_ read him, couldn’t hear his voice whispering in her ear—not because the unnatural ability deserted her, but because she did not _want_ to see what he was thinking, what he was feeling. His sorrow, his guilt, his self-reproach cut too deeply, left scars too deep, made an ocean of tears threaten to wipe away even the shards that were left of her.

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt him,” Simon said softly, turning to face her, making her flinch away, curled up in the corner of her bed against the wall. “But…but you did, and…and we may have to leave. Hopefully, it won’t…” Something tugged at his voice, changing it, roughening it, and River flinched away. “Just stay here, River, okay? I’ll be back in…in a while. Please don’t leave the room.”

“I won’t,” she whispered. But the sound of the door sliding open, of his steps taking him away from her, it left her sick and shaky and pricked with a thousand fiery needles. “Simon!” she called out, viciously biting back a whimper lest it upset the tenuous hold on coherency she so temporarily possessed. “Please…please don’t be afraid of me.”

He was there instantly, sitting on the edge of the bed, tugging at her until she fell forward into his arms, stiff and unwieldy and awkward yet anxious and eager. “Oh, _mei-mei_. I’m not afraid of you. We have to be careful, but this isn’t your fault—this is what they did to you. And I promise, River, I promise you I’m going to fix this. I will—I’ll find a way, no matter what it takes. You just…I just need you to trust me—just be patient with me. Okay? Can you do that?”

“I promise,” she vowed, and hoped she would remember the vow long enough and often enough to see it fulfilled.

She’d promised him she’d trust him and so she laid back when he told her and faced her deepest terrors and let him infuse her body with physical sleep to match the sedation enforced on her abstract self, the River-that-had-been, the one still sleeping now, stirring only infrequently. He had vowed to fix her and if anyone could do it, River had no doubt but that it was Simon simply because he would never give up, never stop searching, never let her go. And she did trust him, had trusted him her entire life, that trust given worth and proven infinitely creditable when he’d walked straight into the heart of the evil blue-white-silver place and taken her away from them and their nightmares. It wasn’t his fault that the nightmares had stowed away inside her and now tried to invade _Serenity_.

If she had been able to keep the thought long enough, she would have thought it ironic that it took the semblance of death to remind her just how much she wanted to live. Even in The Academy, when her sleep had been used as battlefields and her skin as a pincushion and her mind as an experiment, she had prayed not for death, but for Simon to come and save her. Even on _Serenity_ , when there were days she did not even possess awareness of self and nights when she thought terror was the only emotion left to her and long hazy periods of time when she recognized no one except Simon—even then, she had never longed for death.

Yet, conversely, she had not really been fighting to live either, too entrenched in her despair and helplessness to think anything of the breaths she continued to take and the days she continued to sporadically see.

But then _they_ came, followed her to this hospital where Jayne thought on all the Christmases he could have had with this kind of money and Simon gave life with a wave of his hand…and she actually remembered that she loved the sound of Kaylee’s laughter when she talked to her like she was a real girl, and the way Mal would absentmindedly ruffle her hair when he thought no one else could see, and the coolness of Inara’s fingers when they brushed the screams out of her head, and the deep calmness of Shepherd’s presence, and the humor brought by Wash’s teasing, and the sturdy safety inferred by Zoë’s loyalty, and even the way Jayne would sometimes leap to their defense before he reminded himself of all the reasons not to.

And Simon.

Simon…he was here. And so were _they_. And this time, if they caught them, they wouldn’t just leave Simon behind. They’d take him too, bring him with them back to the blue-white-silver place that haunted her steps and nights…or they would just kill him. Release the scream they carried in their pockets and let him fall to the floor, just another bundle of flesh and cloth, emptied of everything that made River love him, never able to save another life or quiet her nightmares or drive back the silence, just hollow materials that weren’t Simon anymore.

River— _his-_ River _and_ broken-River—did love her life. She could see into Simon’s head, see how he was adjusting, but she couldn’t see into her own mind, hadn’t realized that she wasn’t packed and ready to go at all, that she had set up her own memories and expectations and was not ready to move them.

She didn’t want to go back with _them_ , and she couldn’t stand to lose Simon.

So she ran. She pulled Simon after her and begged him to follow her, spilled warnings from her lips, pleaded voicelessly with him.

And he followed her.

He had always followed her, really, all through their lives, dogging her steps, either to keep her out of trouble or because she cajoled him, but always the reaction to her action.

But this time, there was more. She could _feel_ it, _hear_ it, _taste_ it.

He trusted her, believed her, had faith in her. And if finding out that she could chase _his_ nightmares away had been empowering, this…this was overwhelming. Incomprehensible. Cleansing.

He trusted her, followed her out of danger, out of that blue-white-silver place, and she led him away from the ones who came two by two, straight to the captain where there was safety. Led him back to _Serenity_.

And she trusted him, allowed him to slide more cool, burning liquids through her skin to the traceries of veins beneath…and he led _his_ -River out of stasis, welcomed her home.

Two halves of one whole.

Simon and River.

\---


	4. Quantify

\---

Clarity, restored to her, was an overwhelming burden, painful in its unfamiliarity. They were jagged moments, made so by their crystal-sharp vividness and their propensity for disappearing, leaving her high up and tumbling back into the cluttered darkness she had been occupying for so long. Each time Simon slid more of his gift into the maze of veins within her, she was given pieces of understanding and sight so sharply clear it made her reel in shock and the memories of what it was to laugh.

His silver blood, transfused to wake _his_ -River from stasis, flowed through her, swept her along in a quicksilver current that eddied and pooled around her, tugging at her to come and play, then abandoning her in a wilderness that boiled with nausea and the chains of confusion, the weight of which she had once been so familiar with and now chafed against more and more every time they claimed her once again.

Sometimes, it was her actions that were given clarity, making her every move precise and graceful and purposeful, able to walk where she wanted to go, draw what she wanted to draw, join the people she wanted to spend time with. Other times, it was her thoughts that were given a tiny slice of piercing understanding, allowing her to follow a thought from point to point in a logical pattern, developing a straight line within her consciousness that guided her mind from observation to question to conclusion without making detours.

And then, occasionally, it was the voices-that-weren’t that were given strength and clarity.

Usually, the injections Simon gave her hushed the voices, thrust a veil between _River_ and _other_ , granting her the chance to remember who she was without being buffeted and influenced by who everyone else was. It let her laugh and play and not panic when Kaylee chased her to laughingly take the apple from her hands. It let her be a real girl, one who could taste apples and teach Kaylee simple games and allow Inara to brush out her hair and tentatively sit beside Wash to run her hands over the dinosaurs he gleefully introduced her to. A girl who could smile at Simon and take his hand to lead him from his infirmary and tug him to the cargo bay where she and Kaylee and Wash waited to throw a ball to him.

But once, when she had almost grown to expect a piece of lucidity gift-wrapped just for her, the liquid didn’t shine with its usual silver potency in her mind but instead surged with cloudy power somewhere deep in her psyche. And then, like a sleeper agent within her, Simon’s gift didn’t dull the voices—it sharpened them, made them louder, stronger, assaulting her with all the force of a cosmic storm, threatening to sweep all the new-found, newly remembered River away into an ocean of nightmares that now seemed even more terrifying in comparison to the good moments.

The voices whispered at her constantly, even in sleep, dampened only by Simon’s soothers or when she was out amongst the stars themselves, but now, suddenly, they were more than sounds only she could hear, more than secrets she didn’t want to know and insights she hadn’t earned. They were given substance and weight and pressure so that she almost thought she had entered the Black without a spacesuit on, oppressed by a vacuum that was really filled with too much for her to see, to comprehend, to be able to equate or quantify.

All she could do was ride it out, let it swirl and eddy around her, flow with the high tide, wait for the liquid silver to run its course and leave her behind. But then Simon took her hand, ready to lead her to dinner, and she was drowning, no longer able to ride it out or wait for it to pass.

Simon’s thoughts obliterated _her_. There was only him/her/them, only Simon/River/Simon, the tiny seed that was her sandwiched between everything that was _him_.

No shelves, no rows, no boxes, because that wasn’t the way Simon saw himself. Only her, the warmth of her slender hand in his/hers, worry at how cool her skin was to the touch. A brief memory of swimming in the lake at the summer party they’d held on their estate on Ariel- _the-hopsital-he’d-visited-the-hospital-they’d-robbed-tiny-room-knee-on-a-throat-don’t-think-about-it_ , the cool water slipping around him/her and stinging his/her eyes when River- _his-sister-young-brilliant-beautiful-annoying-brat_ splashed him/her with laughter as graceful as her dancing. The corridor, the steps to lead them to the common area, passing hope that Jayne- _saved-them-helped-them-didn’t-leave-them-behind-maybe-more-than-previously-thought-still-irritating_ didn’t choose to make a scene tonight. River- _his-sister-spinning-in-the-grass-feeding-him-berries-crying-in-the-night-hadn’t-been-fast-enough-have-to-adjust-a-new-soother-help-her-sleep-give-her-peace_ seemed calm, so maybe the dinner would go smoothly, but on the other hand, her apparent placidity worried him/her. It made it seem as if he/she were leading a doll- _like-the-type-sitting-on-River’s-shelves-the-ones-passed-over-in-exchange-for-his/her-textbooks_ , not his/her living, breathing sister, her eyes somewhat startlingly hollow- _too-much-like-when-she-erupted-from-cryo-stasis-woke-from-nightmares-didn’t-recognize-him/her_. Simon/River/Simon tried to pretend the tiny knot in the pit of his/her stomach wasn’t really there, tried to focus on the good things, on the scent that actually smelled good thanks to Book- _working-in-the-kitchen-a-comforting-hand-on-his/her-shoulder-a-steady-voice-reminder-of-the-Shepherds-visiting-the-hospital-in-Capitol-City-took-care-of-River-kind-to-her_ , on the smiles from Kaylee _-beautiful-warm-inviting-enigmatic-simple-straightforward-a-siren’s-call-he/she-couldn’t/can’t-follow-feel-of-her-hand-on-his/her-cheek-admiration-in-her-compelling-eyes-so-afraid-she’ll-see-through-him/her-leave-him/her-behind-like-everyone-else_ , or the byplay he’d seen already starting between Wash- _friendly-concern-worried-about-them-he-smiles-and-plays-with-River_ and Zoe- _uncertainty-might-shoot-him/her-if-ordered-gave-River-her-boots_.

The little bit of River still aware shook inside herself, hoarding the shards-that-were-her possessively, protectively, heedless of the slices they left on her inner self, frantic that she not lose them to the inundation of _all-things-Simon_ —she had so little that the thought of losing it was enough all on its own to make her gibber and shake with terror and loss. Outwardly, she flinched away from her brother’s touch when he helped her sit down, knew he didn’t notice because he was turning to pull out Kaylee’s chair for her.

And then Simon was gone, but that wasn’t a good thing because now it was all Mal, trampling her beneath the stark bluntness of his strength, the terrifying brutality of his memories, the oppressive simplicity of his wants. And then Inara, so alien to the River being crushed, so calm and in control, so ruled by passion. And Jayne—afraid and bitter and almost innocent, in a way, behind his ruthlessness—and Book—hiding, oh, he was hiding so much, but hiding it more from himself than anyone else—and Kaylee—so full of dreams and hopes and joys that there was little room for calculation and suspicion, but so much fear there, too, lurking beneath it all, fear of disappointment, and insecurities that made her fragile—and Zoë—too severe, too haunted, softened, rounded, enlightened by her husband—and Wash—truly innocent, yet even he had a past and jealousy and anxieties, his thoughts centered around Zoë and _Serenity_ , all else fading before those—and Mal and Inara and Jayne and Book and Kaylee and Zoë and Wash and Mal and…

And each one looking around at the others, their images superimposed one over another so that she—and who was she now? was there even a _her_ left anymore?—saw each of them the way everyone else saw them, and it was too much, far too much for her mind to hold all at once, no matter what alterations had been made.

She screamed, then, just to prove that there was still a River, just to check whether she could still move her own body or whether the scream would emerge from everyone else’s throats. It was a high, shrill scream that pierced more than it carried, and maybe silence fell before it, but River couldn’t hear the silence, or the scream, not through her own ears, only through the minds of everyone else at the table. And when she dared to unsqueeze her eyes and try to look about, she almost fainted at the dizzying swirl of Mal looking at River- _tiny-girl-hurt-so-badly-by-the-vaunted-Alliance-trouble-not-her-fault-trouble_ , and Inara looking at River- _poor-girl-so-badly-haunted-should-be-something-she/she-can-do_ , and Jayne looking at River- _moon-brained-scream-whistled-right-through-him/her-can’t-know-doesn’t-know-money-too-good-cut-her-brain-up_ , and Wash looking at River- _poor-kid-glad-she-has-her-brother-to-help-hope-she-gets-better_ , and—and—and—and—

She screamed again because River wasn’t looking at River; River was looking at the others, but the others were looking at River, and River’s thoughts were subsumed beneath the others and soon there would be nothing left but a blank shell, hollowed out and cast away, an empty doll with a porcelain face that never moved, and then what would Simon do?

“Make it stop! Make it stop!” Nine pairs of ears heard a plate clatter to the deck; eight pairs of eyes saw a young girl throw up hands and arms to cover her eyes and ears, trying to blot out her surroundings as she curled into a hunched circle and rocked back and forth.

Simon put a hand on her back, knelt before her—she knew because she saw his perception change when he lowered himself, could feel the texture of her dress under his hand and the pressure of his hand on her back—and put his arms around her as he’d done so many times, blocking her off from the rest of reality, walling her in, a frame to remind her of who she was.

His mind was an oft-visited sanctuary, and even though this was different, as altered as she was, she still preferred the relative familiarity and solace of his thoughts to the rest, so she burrowed deeper into his embrace, clutching at his sweater in an effort to use tactile sensation to anchor herself, still too afraid to open her eyes, aware that she was crying only when he/she felt the moisture of her tears on his/her neck.

“Make it stop,” she sobbed into his/her ear, felt him/her shudder with empathizing pain at the pitiable request. “I’m blind, Simon! There’s nothing there! She’s gone, washed away in the flood, and now she’s just a mirror, shattered on the floor.”

“Shh, River, shh. You’re not blind—it’s all right. Here, you know me, remember? Look at me. Look up. Look up, and tell me if you can see me.”

She didn’t want to, didn’t want to leave the minuscule comfort provided by the deprivation of sight, but it was her _ge-ge_ asking it of her, so slowly, tentatively, certain she would find herself once more, still, in the heart of a kaleidoscope, she pried open her eyes.

And she saw him.

Simon—worried blue eyes, concerned features, mouth upturned in a bittersweet smile, worry creased into his brow, youth obscured by responsibility, affection unmarred. His hands framed her shoulders, his body blocked her from the sight of the others, all of them watching and looking at her, their thoughts threatening to steal self-awareness from her, but Simon was there, an anchor keeping her grounded to her body.

“I can see you,” she whispered, and so great was her relief that she wept again and hugged him tightly, her face turned into his neck so that she didn’t risk visual contact with the others’ overpowering consciousnesses. “I can see you,” she said again, the fact so great a miracle that it bore repeating. “Just…” She took a deep breath, swallowing tears and letting their salty liquid wipe away the smudges off the pile of shards on which she could now begin to loosen her painful grip. “Just don’t ever stop seeing _me_ , Simon.”

“Never,” he promised her fiercely, and so welcoming and warm was that comfort that she found the stormy drug within her submerged beneath the quilt of Simon’s unwavering devotion. Gradually, instantaneously, the others disappeared, blinked out of her mind so that all she saw was Simon looking at her, and her own hands on his collar. Her resultant smile made Simon’s expression lighten slightly, which was enough to make her own smile stick around just a bit longer despite the headache induced by the baptism of thoughts.

“You didn’t eat anything,” Simon worried aloud, heedless of his own full plate behind him, untouched and untasted. “Do you want us to go back to your room and eat? Or do you want to stay here?”

The possibility of being consumed inside the minds of _Serenity’s_ inhabitants was frightening, almost as much so as her nightmares, and yet…and yet Kaylee was sitting just beside Simon, watching and waiting, and Simon was aware of the mechanic’s gaze, a tiny little piece of himself he had carefully, solemnly packed away, pretending he didn’t yearn for the companionship of others, of one other in particular. He was embarrassed now, she could feel, as always worried about what her outbursts might mean to their welcome on this boat, a bit afraid to meet the others’ eyes, and yet…he wanted to stay. Kaylee had been smiling at him, at something he’d said before...before River.

“She will eat here,” River—she thought she was still River—said imperiously, and for her trouble was awarded a flicker of relief and happiness in Simon and glee in Kaylee and varying other responses from the others that she dared not linger on.

“Okay. I’ll get you some more food.” Simon straightened her chair and slid his plate over to her, and picked up her plate from the deck, cleaning up her mess, getting himself a bit more food. River kept her eyes fixed on his plate. Maybe she was a bit embarrassed too about her outburst, or maybe not. She hadn’t been herself long enough to know, wasn’t yet familiar enough with her body and consciousness to figure out for sure what she was thinking and feeling.

When Simon finally sat back down again, Mal said something wry and acerbic, and Zoë agreed to his rhetorical question, and Jayne made a crack about Simon, and Kaylee leapt to his defense, and Wash insulted the mercenary, and Inara smoothed the moment before it turned into an argument, and Simon smiled shyly, quietly, and Book complimented him on something or other, and River watched her plate and tried very hard to assimilate all that she had experienced in the same way her body digested the food Simon made sure she ate.

It was hard, though, especially considering that it had been only…recently—months? or only weeks?—not too long ago that she hadn’t known which silent voice went with which face, which presence, which spoken voice. Now, there was a whole new ‘verse of concepts and notions and overwhelming emotions to pick through.

Daringly, cautiously, she looked up from the unappetizing food before her, her gaze on Jayne, drawn by the potency of his nervousness. She didn’t need the shifting looks, the seat chosen for its distance from Simon’s admiring gaze, the lack of insults thrown either Simon or River’s way. Those physical signs were too nebulous, too vague, and redundant next to the restrained fear leaking from his every pore, the anxiety that _they’ll find out, they’ll know, they’ll see what I did_.

In fact, each one sitting at this table broadcast one thought or impression above all others. A swirling, shifting mass of emotion, half-conceived thought that was more felt than understood, a flood that waited to rapaciously devour River should she venture out from behind her brother’s protective umbrella of _River, River, River, Kay—no, River, River, River…_

The mind cried out for a frame of reference, for common ground, and River—maybe _his_ -River, maybe _broken_ -River, maybe some more present, twisted form of them both—was eager to grant that wish, desperate to quantify all that possessed her.

Jayne, so like all the border towns on the Rim planets they visited, the ones that offered nothing of what River was used to yet had an allure, an appeal all their own. There were raucous taverns and tawdry brothels and a plethora of armaments bristling with firepower…and yet, hidden deep inside under stacks of letters and monies sent to his mother and warm knitted hats, there were homes where families lived and quiet stores that gave out necessities and a few soup kitchens, here and there, that handed out sparse moments of compassion, of goodness, most of it spiraling outward from a well-tended grave with a boy’s face, shining with idealism and hero-worship, stamped into the headstone made out of mudder’s clay.

And Kaylee, sitting there beside River at Simon’s right hand, the recipient of whatever portion of his attention he allowed to wander from River. She was bright and glowing and radiant, sweet and full of life and vitality, a sun that shone outward to seep through into even the hardest or most distracted of hearts, pulling others into her orbit even though so many wouldn’t realize or admit that it was the sun keeping them there, spinning ever onward, a sun whose heart wasn’t pure magnum but rather the gentle beating heart of _Serenity_ herself, a sun begetting a sun, both of them caressing and nurturing the lives so dependent on them.

And Wash, sitting there with laughter pocketed in his mouth and Zoë’s hand treasured in his, the stalwart first officer’s own smile quiet and reserved but no less sincere for all that—the mountains rising starkly into the sky, growing up from the ground to stand alone, unyielding, unmoving, dipping down into hidden valleys full of verdant growth known only to a select treasured few, blossoming and blooming in secret places, softened and smoothed by the ocean waves washing up against her, laughing through the surf, drawing back with the fears of low tide, bubbling and chuckling and so much deeper than he looked from the outside, daring to reach out liquid fingers toward those quiet, private nooks amidst the towering mountains.

Inara, sitting there at the foot of the table, opposite the captain either by design or chance, her very appearance denoting the desert, so austere, so beautiful, so dangerous, burning and searing away all who sought to enter without permission, offering a dangerous route of misdirection and shifting sands, hiding away the precious oases that so miraculously existed, demanding time and effort and risk as the price of those stolen waters.

And Book with his hidden hair and his broken symbol and his tempting faith, fleeing to the Black he so resembled, trying so hard to grow his faith as vast as space itself, never realizing that his faith was more like the shining stars pricking through the surface of the obsidian past that threatened to close over him, secretive and dangerous, underlying the glowing suns like cold velvet, dimmed and muted and justified by the too-sharp stars that hung there in the void, each one a landmark set out along the course of his life.

And Mal, the captain, the sergeant, the reluctant hero, personified by the ship _Serenity_ herself, a battle he’d never admit was over, a piece of history that had been forgotten by too many, a war he’d never let go of, that he’d carry everywhere with him, inside him, living it out so that everyone who’d forgotten what had happened would see it in all its disillusioned, defiant, disparate glory when they looked at him, collecting others in his metal shell and soft interior to replace the ones who had come before and fallen all around him in a haze of bullets and laser fire.

And Simon, dear, sweet Simon, a rock on which all the forces of the ‘verse could hurl themselves without effect, yet warmed by the sun and possessing a myriad of caverns and nooks to shelter and protect his beloved sister. So solid and sturdy and unwavering, planted deep in whatever he devoted himself to, be it doctoring or River, heedless of the winds of fate and chance and malevolency that battered and howled at his unbending steadfastness.

But that left one person at the table still who had yet to be quantified, one last individual who wasn’t so individual now, unique traits and personable thoughts twisted and perverted to suit command words and mental conditioning and all the terrifying bodies that lived within her—three more besides the decaying corpses she’d seen before, three men wearing uniforms of black and silhouetted against a silver Skyplex—and the shards of nightmares that sliced and gashed and ripped yet still managed to connect all the stumbling pieces of herself into a broken whole.

River herself.

Everyone at the table broadcast one thought above all. But if that were so…what would hers be? The ones who came two by two—or maybe they had come after, or before, it was so hard to keep it all straight—had unmade and then remade her so that she could look around and know all that she saw in the others, see deep into their minds as if their flesh and bone had been peeled back to allow her entrance, but in doing so, they had made it impossible for her to hear her own thoughts, to see what she herself thought or felt or considered.

She was just like all the moons in this discovered system, beautiful and useful all on their own, then terraformed, changed, distorted to fit their own means and ends, and now still beautiful, still useful, yet possessing dangers hidden, some in deep mines, others in poisoned plains, or tainted waters, or noxious skies. Hidden deep beneath the transmogrified surface, lurking in wait for an opportunity, a target…courage, resourcefulness, coherence.

Together, they all—Mal, Inara, Zoë, Wash, Kaylee, Jayne, Book, and Simon and River—made up the building blocks that comprised the ‘verse, missing only Earth-that-was, yet still, really, containing remnants of that place, of those peoples, of their secrets and bloodlines and frailties. All here, at one table, the ‘verse condensed into a single room.

River couldn’t help but laugh at that thought, and once she laughed at that thought, it was hard not to laugh at another and then another until suddenly it seemed impossible to _stop_ laughing. She couldn’t understand why Simon didn’t join in, why he looked at her so concernedly, so tenderly, instead of laughing with her. But then, Simon had always been too serious for his own good, never able to stop and pull his nose out of his books or his patients and remember to smile unless she was there to show him the way.

She tried to show him this time, really she did, but he wasn’t listening to her. He so rarely listened anymore, she thought, though there were so many holes and gaps in her mind that it was hard to say for certain. He led her away from the ‘verse and took her to a tiny room where there was only moon and stone, and she laughed again because it was so funny that the immovable stone should have such a soft touch and soothing voice.

“I’m sorry, River,” the stone kept murmuring. “I’m so sorry. I never should have switched the medication. I just hated seeing you get sick—I thought this one would make the nausea go away, but…I’m sorry. I’ll keep trying. Please, just…please be patient with me. I’m trying. I’m trying.”

“Storms come and go,” she said in a sing-song voice, dancing her fingers over his brow and nose and chin with a little giggle. “Just don’t bring the lightning.”

“Whatever you want,” he replied, and that was the funniest joke she’d ever heard so she laughed and laughed and laughed until she finally realized, as she burrowed into his comforting chest, that she was actually weeping with harsh, choking sobs that made her entire body shudder and drained the moons of all their rivers.

Simon never gave her that particular transfusion of silver fire again, and during those times when she remembered it, she was pathetically grateful for that. Some punch lines should never be understood; some jokes were too painful to be explained or understood.

And then sometimes, other times, it was her emotions that were given clarity, made crystal-clear and diamond-sharp. The first time it happened, it puzzled her. It had been so long since she had been able to pick out one emotion from the mass of them that dominated her. Yet the sea of _everything_ had been siphoned off and turned into a stream that glistened transparently enough to reveal her feet, planted in the silt on the bottom, still and quiet and poignant.

Without the tempest of every emotion she’d ever felt or could possibly feel buffeting her on all sides, she was able to stare into that stream and look long and hard at each emotion, each feeling, each impression. She ran her fingers through the water, startled to find there were liquid layers, the sun-warmed top giving way to cooler waters below and then to the iciness of the bottom layer.

So much she could feel and think and emote, and yet…and yet there was so little actually there. Large emotions like boulders but all the smaller pebbles had been ground into fine sand that drifted like fairy dust between her toes.

Irritation, though, that one was there, reflecting back an image of Simon’s eyes lit with admiration and gratitude when they’d escaped from the hands of blue—and terror, lingering still like spiders flitting across the surface of the stream, brilliant blue, leaking cloying dye to obscure the clear waters. Irritation, remembered terror, her own gratitude toward _Serenity_ and her crew for taking her in and looking after her—some kindly, others absentmindedly, others still a bit reluctantly, but all looking after her in their own ways—and love that had been there her entire life for the brother she thought she could probably remember seeing shortly after her birth if she just tried hard enough, or maybe even his voice, muddled through the womb, as he spoke to her even before she’d entered the ‘verse headfirst.

They were so few emotions when it was all boiled down, so she examined each one as if it were a precious commodity. The gratitude was easy to explain, but warm and comforting and silken. The terror was all-encompassing, all-pervasive, and always present, more familiar to her than her own name. The love was vast and endless and _home_ and she dared not examine it for long lest her attention draw the spiders to it. And then only the irritation was left for her to decipher.

“Afraid. Afraid we’ll find out,” she said, and was pleased when the shelf in Simon’s mind filled with _admiration_ and _gratitude_ for Jayne was instantly cleared of its offending clutter and cleaned meticulously. Pleased…until she looked around at all the shelves with her name on them and wondered what it would be like to see all those shelves cleared and cleaned just as quickly and immaculately.

She shivered, then, and fled Simon’s thoughts, fled his mind altogether, hiding away until she felt Jayne’s jagged-edged thoughts in the infirmary. Curious, then—a new emotion to examine and analyze—she ventured to the door and peeked inside.

Jayne, gleaming under sterile lights, braced and helpless, weak and afraid, though he’d never admit it.

“You’re in a dangerous line of work, Jayne,” Simon said, his tone such that a few memories floated to the surface of the transparent, reflective stream, images of Simon scarcely looking up from his packing for MedAcad while he calmly, almost off-handedly, as if he weren’t sure why it even needed to be verbally reiterated, reassured her that of course he wouldn’t forget her while he was gone, that she would always be his _mei-mei_.

She treasured the memory for a moment, allowing it to scare away the spiders and color the scene before her with faith and trust and pride—all new emotions that added depth and complexity to the pristine stream. Simon’s tone kept her safe from fear and terror; his assurance that Jayne would always be safe with him kept the stream full and flowing, protected from drought; his offer of a truce reminded her of infractions he’d easily forgiven her, arguments he’d abandoned, bad days he’d weathered; his trust, so freely granted, made the water she waded through suddenly warm and soften and caress her with gentle currents that tugged her toward sunlight and lush grass.

River stood there, outside the infirmary, felt Simon’s hand brush her shoulder comfortingly as he passed her, watched Jayne as his sluggish mind tried to comprehend what had just been given him, the gift he’d been granted.

Simon was so good and noble and selfless…and naïve.

Jayne was the rugged towns, and the townspeople didn’t know what to do with stone, could only blast it away, or cover it up with more taverns and armories, or ignore it in favor of greener fields in other places. He didn’t understand that stone could bolster and strengthen and support, instead saw it only as a deterrence, an obstacle, a wall. For the transient moment, Jayne would stand there at this section of stone cliff he hadn’t seen before and scratch his head and ponder, but soon, when he’d had time to forget just how unyielding the stone was, he’d pull out his explosives and his building bricks and his blinders.

But the moon…well, no town could stand against the force of a tide or the darkness of an eclipse or the ground shaking beneath its very bedrocks.

So River smiled and she tilted her head and she said, “Also…I can kill you with my brain.”

And she skipped away and followed the tug of her brother’s thoughts and found him sitting on the edge of his bed, staring straight ahead.

“Simon?” she whispered, peering hesitantly into his room. At night, when the spiders entered her mind and sprayed their blue-tinged venom through her dreams, he would always come to her room, kneel at her bedside, whisper into her ear. She had rarely set foot into the room that was his, but she was unsurprised by its compulsive neatness, its crisply folded tidiness, its warm hominess with an extra brightly colored blanket folded at the foot of the bed and a tiny floating picture of Simon and River, young and innocent and together, atop the box doubling as a nightstand. Anything else to personalize it, to betray his innermost character, was in the infirmary he loved so much—the only piece left of all his persistent work to become a doctor—and her own room.

“River.” Simon gave her a small, habitual smile and made a tiny nod to gesture her forward.

Slowly, almost shyly, she stepped over the threshold and into his room, took an extra step forward to stand just in front of him.

He looked up at her, something almost like exhaustion, or maybe disillusionment, in his expression, hidden behind his characteristic concern for her. “Is everything okay, River? Did you need something?”

“It hurt,” she realized, surprised. It had never occurred to her that Simon had appreciated having a shelf in which he could finally contain Jayne, a place for him to hinge his hopes that maybe this was the safe place he had promised to find for her. She had not thought that removing that shelf would leave a small blank space that would mock Simon.

“What hurt? You’re hurt?” A crease marred Simon’s brow and he studied her intently, though he did not reach for her. His hands were cupped around something in his lap, concealing whatever it was from her view.

“She feels,” River told him impatiently. “Transfusion woke up the stream, banished the ocean. Now all that’s left is a see-through mirror. No injuries, just conflicting currents.”

Simon blinked. “Okay. You’re not feeling sick, are you? The medication—”

“It’s not relevant.” River waved a dismissive hand and then inched forward in an effort to see through the shield made by his hand, the curiosity so recently summoned making a quick reappearance.

Simon wasn’t aware of her scrutiny, too absorbed in the empty shelf to notice the direction of her often-distracted gaze. The shelf, River belatedly saw, wasn’t so empty anymore. In the place of his admiration for Jayne, there was now, seemingly, a shrine.

A box of all the people Simon had trusted who had ended up abandoning or betraying him. An image of a familiar young doctor, dark lock falling over his brow, face lit with innocence and hope. A picture of their parents. A nameplate for St. Lucy’s Hospital on Ariel. A bag holding the metaphorical thirty pieces of silver.

In his hands, River caught a glimpse of worn cloth, faded colors, tiny creases where it had been folded into the shape of a handkerchief.

Troubled, she sank onto the bed beside Simon. After a moment of consideration, she tucked her hands around his arm and leaned into him. Some of the rigidity of his posture seemed to melt a bit, and he rested his head atop hers.

“I don’t know who I am anymore, River,” he whispered, almost more to himself than to her. “Sometimes I’m afraid of who I’m becoming.”

“The stone is scoured clean,” she murmured. “But it’s still stone.”

“You’re right.” A hint of a chuckle slipped from Simon’s lips to stir her hair, and River was heartened by the light moving from his shrine—a shrine to his earlier self, to innocence and naiveté and ingenuousness—and to other rows, other thoughts, other memories. “Thanks for clearing that up, _mei-mei_.”

“You’re carrying the memento,” she said, the incongruity of the statement noticeable to her but deemed immaterial. The cloth in his hand was distracting her, threatening to send her tumbling away from the clear stream and back into the turbulent ocean.

Simon glanced down at the remnant of her favorite blanket. “I needed something to remind me what mattered most.” With a quick movement, he tucked it back into his shirt pocket, beneath his sweater, then curled his arm around her, creating an oft-visited nook for her to rest in. “But I don’t need a reminder anymore. Not when I have the real thing.”

And then there were no more thoughts of the Simon-that-had-been, no more shelves featuring him, only rows and rows and rows centered around River. It was a comforting anchor that kept her safe and grounded as she was tugged toward the high tide of the roiling ocean that swept away the quiet stream. It was a terrible responsibility that made her realize—with one of those bursts of clarity that floated through her like silver-infused bubbles and popped unexpectedly into her consciousness—that she herself was Simon’s anchor, keeping him grounded to _Serenity_ , to this life, to this ‘verse.

But she was so fragile, hanging by a slender thread, so wounded and weak…what would happen when she finally lost the last shard-of-her and evaporated into nothingness? What would be left of Simon, for Simon, then?

Sometimes, most of the time, River found clarity to be just a bit overrated.

\---


	5. Heal

\---

Hiding had become a habit for River since she’d come to _Serenity_. Or even before that, she sometimes remembered—she’d been hiding in some way or another since she’d heard Simon say her name and opened her eyes and stepped up behind him and found herself looking into his eyes, half-thinking it was all a trick except that she could _feel_ him there in that living, dying tomb, and said his name aloud, turning his presence from fantasy into reality.

She’d never been able to hide from the people—if she could call them that—at The Academy, their eyes and fingers and secrets burrowing into her every crevice and moment. But everyone else, everyone _since_ …their minds were too much for her, each one enough to comprise the whole of an individual’s existence, and so many of them always trying to crowd in on her, pushing out whatever hints of individuality she still possessed.

So she hid.

It wasn’t necessarily easy to flee the voices in a mid-book transport ship, but she had grown quite adept at it. Simon called it playing hide-and-seek, but he said that because he didn’t realize—she couldn’t tell him—that she didn’t _want_ anyone to find her. Oftentimes, she imagined herself lying against the curve of the ship and just disintegrating, melting away until she was one and the same with _Serenity_ , a metal ship that couldn’t be hurt, that could always fly free into the sky, that could keep safe the ones she loved enough to take inside her.

But that was a fanciful whimsy, nothing more, because she was a girl made out of flesh and blood that proved alarmingly susceptible to drugs and scalpels and manacles and locked doors. And anyway, sometimes she did want to be found, wanted someone to look for her, climb all the stairs and peer into all the hidden crannies and set his gentle hand on her shoulder and lead her back to a place where she could safely rest.

She wondered, sometimes, if Simon always wanted to find her, or if he, like her, sometimes wanted her to just disappear and leave him free and unfettered.

She hated that she wondered.

She hated that she already knew the answer.

She hated the answer.

She hated herself for not being strong enough to let go of him, for being too selfish to give him over to Kaylee, for needing him so entirely.

She hated that he didn’t hate her. It would make things simpler, make it easier for her to let him go, for him to turn to Kaylee, for her to drift away and melt into nothingness—nothingness, not _Serenity_ , because as much as she loved the sheltering ship, what would tie her to the Firefly without Simon there?

_Serenity_ curled around her, wrapped her in a metallic embrace, caressed her with hanging wires, hid her behind smuggling panels, crooned to her with the beat of her engine. And River hunched in on herself, her eyes tightly closed, flying in her thoughts so that _Serenity_ could keep flying through the Black. Simon was just beyond the wall next to her, holed up in his infirmary, pretending he wasn’t hurt, pretending he was just fine, but one thing only kept rattling through his head.

_Robot. Robot. Robot_.

Each repetition bled like fire within his mind, leaking images of Kaylee curled up in a hammock listening to words spoken more eloquently than any Simon could himself conjure.

It perplexed River.

Simon always had the right words, always so confident and sure of what she needed him to say. He’d always been shy in front of people, always quiet and withdrawn, but confident too, content in his place as a surgeon and his gifted abilities, certain of his role in the ‘verse. But now…now uncertainty and want too big for him to comprehend and a sense of displacement kept tangling all the words he wanted to say, trapping most of them behind his mask that he was fine and well and happy, turning the ones that did escape him into watered down versions of what was in his head because he didn’t know how long they’d be here, didn’t want to give false hope, didn’t want to say what he really felt if he couldn’t fully commit himself.

So maybe it did make perfect sense, because Simon always, only ever _fully_ committed himself. There could never be any partway, never any maybes or might bes or could bes. There was only his entire being and soul and focus centered solely on…

On River.

There was no room for Kaylee now. No room, even, for Simon. Only room for River, and underneath that bleeding, leaking word rattling around in Simon’s head and bruising his heart—curled up in his chest for safety just like she curled up within _Serenity_ , his heart just as safe and protected from the world as she was protected from the thoughts of the others—underneath that word, there were still images of River and thoughts of brain patterns and ideas about new medicines he could try.

She wanted to weep for him. _His_ -River still stirred occasionally, but she was an emaciated shell of who she had been and would never completely come back, not full and healthy and vibrant and colorful.

The old River was dead.

But…so was the old Simon. And all that was left was a man who wanted and desired and loved but would never admit it, never let on that he did, never let go of _what-needed-to-be-done_ , never be able to actually voice all the thoughts and feelings and dreams that kept piling up inside him, a man enshrined on a once-empty shelf.

And it was all her fault.

River slipped aside the panel and rolled out of _Serenity_ , stood there on a landing poised over a drop down metal stairs so unlike the marble staircases that had populated Osiris, a fall to the far-off deck all varying shades of gray so different from the vivid whites and yellows and greens of the place that had once been home. All around her, _Serenity_ blinked and hummed and moved—she had thought it was a new home to replace the old, but now it bore more resemblance to a coffin, one that held the remains of both Simon and River Tam.

“What’cha doin’ there?”

The captain was behind her, the heart of coal that still stubbornly glowed for all that he tried to squish it. He was looking at her intently, and River suddenly could not bear to have him studying her so closely, did not want this man who had lost so much and still kept going to see _her_ , who had lost all and could not keep going, not without help.

“I broke it,” she admitted because she didn’t want to be a coward, didn’t want to hide what she had done, reflecting back on Mal the courage she saw in him, borrowing pieces of it to add to her growing collection of mismatched odds and ends. Maybe if she admitted that she had done it, they would be able to see that there was still so much there worth fixing, worth taking a look at, worth _everything_.

“What?” Mild alarm flared through Mal’s thoughts, turning his mute voice ragged, and his gaze left her to look at the innards of the ship where she had lain.

“I broke it. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know that would happen. But I reached in with codes and requests and I touched it with my nightmares and now it doesn’t work the same anymore.”

A string of curses to illustrate his unhappiness, his displeasure, and River shrank before his disapproval even while inwardly she was satisfied that finally, _finally_ , she was being brought to task for all the harm she’d done.

“Simon! Come on, Doc, where are you?”

River felt her own measure of disapproval. She had thought Mal understood, thought that his own knowledge of all the things he had inadvertently broken would help him understand what she had ruined, but apparently she was wrong.

His thoughts were full of _Serenity_.

Maybe…maybe _Serenity_ was his Simon.

“River?” And there Simon was, coming when called like an obedient puppy instead of the surgeon who had once commanded an army of nurses and orderlies. He was looking at her with his usual affection and concern, and River was ashamed and scared and felt so tiny before him, but his hands were outstretched to her, and so she moved to him and let him brush her hair back and rest a soft hand on her shoulder.

“I broke it,” she told him quietly. “I’m sorry, Simon. It was there, and I thought it was mine, but maybe it wasn’t, and now it’s too late to put it back.”

“Shh, _mei-mei_ , it’s okay.” She knew Simon was aware of the crew gathering all around them, drawn to the commotion and the charisma of the captain, worried when they saw her, distressed when Mal ranted about her touching parts of his ship unsupervised and why hadn’t Simon been watching her and where was he going to find replacement parts this deep in the Black and why wasn’t Kaylee trying to fix it already. Simon was aware of it all, more so than she was, but he didn’t look away from her, more proof if she had needed it.

“I broke it,” River told him again, a bit frustrated. Why didn’t Simon realize what she had done? She leaned into his forgiving embrace even as she waited for him to thrust her away in realization.

“It’ll be all right,” Simon assured her. “Whatever it is, I’m sure Kaylee will be able to fix it.”

River cocked her head and studied him in puzzlement. How could he be so sure that Kaylee could fix what River had broken when Simon didn’t even think Kaylee would ever speak to him again beyond murmured words that lashed out to inflict pain? Things often confused her since promises of dancing had turned into needles that deposited dead bodies in her mind, but this seemed more than confusing; it was an outright contradiction.

“You’re supposed to be watching her!” the captain exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air, thick with the smoke of mute voices. “You’re not supposed to be letting her wander around and pull parts off the ship!”

“I can’t see anything wrong here,” Kaylee said as she straightened up from her crouch.

River couldn’t help but gape at her.

_Robot. Robot. Robot._

The words were still beating an endless tattoo through her head—Simon’s discomfort and hurt and regret, Kaylee’s anger and sadness and uncertainty—and River wondered why they thought _she_ was crazy if they could stand there and say they couldn’t see that anything was wrong.

The captain was angry, terribly angry, and afraid; the Serenity that kept him going and fighting and living flickered unsteadily in his thoughts. He reached out and whirled River around by her shoulder, demanding an answer to what she had broken.

Simon flared hot, burned cold, knocking away the captain’s hand, stepping in front of River, all doubts and regrets and fears obliterated before the need required by his total devotion—the repetition of that single word in his head finally, momentarily silenced. And River hid behind him, afraid of Mal’s unrelenting determination crashing up against Simon’s unwavering commitment, terrified that one would shatter before the other, or that both would keep beating up against each other until there was nothing left of one or the other of them.

 “Whatever she did, I’m sure she didn’t mean any harm by it,” Simon defended her. “If it takes a new part, I still have a bit of money I can give you—but don’t touch her!”

Mal’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “I don’t much care for your tone, boy, and she shouldn’t be touchin’ my ship!”

Others were speaking now, a whirling hodgepodge of questions and statements and jokes and accusations that flailed at her from all sides, too many for her to choose any one thing to reflect back. River cowered behind Simon and raised her hands to her ears, tossed about and scattered by the conflicting thoughts and words of _Serenity’s_ inhabitants.

“Maybe you’re not recallin’ the last time a seemingly insignificant part fried on us, but I’m not like to be forgettin’ any time soon, so I’ll only be askin’ once more, Doc—what did she break?”

River let out a sob and shivered and shook and shuddered. “The doctor!” she yelled. “I broke your doctor!”

The silence that followed her outburst was outward only. Inwardly, the thoughts still flowed all around her, demanding an outlet. Only, River didn’t care what the others thought. She sifted through the thoughts around her to find Simon’s, dared to look up and saw him stricken, staring at her with an almost tragic look on his face. And his thoughts…she almost laughed, almost cried, almost screamed and fought, when she realized his thoughts were filled with regret—but not of her, no, only for what he must have said, must have done, must have thought, to give her the impression that she had hurt him.

“I broke you,” she whispered as the others let their voices fall silent while their thoughts murmured and whispered in her ears. “I did. I didn’t mean to, but it’s true just the same. Intentions don’t change the result, and now you’re broken.”

“No, _mei-mei_ ,” he said, so softly, so gently, so tenderly that she thought she might shatter or maybe just melt beneath his touch as he reached out and took her hands, smoothed out their fists, slipped his fingers through hers. “I’m not broken. I’m safe, I’m whole, and we’re here together.”

“It’s not the same,” she explained patiently. Her brother was so smart, but sometimes he missed the entire point of things. “I called you and you came, and now everything is different. Your sister is gone and all that’s left is a broken toy and now you’re trapped in a home that’s not home, in a place where nothing fits like it did before, and nothing works right. Purpose has changed, mission’s different, but the tool is still the same, blunted and moved and left useless so many times.”

“Shh, shh, shh.” He tried to soothe her, but River was tired of always letting him take away her pain while he hid his own. It was nauseating, looking at him there and seeing him bleeding out, the pain of the wound masked by the adrenaline-like rush of helping her.

“It’s all different!” she cried, batting away his hands, chafing against the touch and the feelings it evoked. “It’s not clear anymore and there’s no jolt to bring back the pulse and the monitor’s lying because you’re not dead, but you’re not alive either. No saving lives, no parents, no future, nothing, and it’s all my fault. She meddled and it wasn’t hers to—”

“No.” There was a thread of steel suddenly lacing Simon, bracing his voice and woven around his spine and sharpening his eyes, and River stared at him, at this new glimpse of what was inside him, felt the others staring just the same. “This is not your fault, River, okay? And I _am_ happy; I’m not broken. As long as you’re safe, I’m happy. I don’t need to save other lives as long as I save you, all right? I’m not broken, and neither are you. Two halves of the same whole, remember?”

“Stop it!” River screamed, all the defenses that had been constructed so ruthlessly around her left powerless beneath this onslaught. “Stop saying it’s okay! It’s _not_ okay! You can’t fix it when you don’t even see the problem!” Breathing hard, she peered through the glare cast by the shattering light of the crew around her and found her brother through the dilated haze. “You should hate me, Simon—hate me, please, at least a little. Cause and effect and—”

“Hush.” There was something in him that made her fall silent, the stillness of his mind’s usually echoing confines made her catch her breath, and his fingers on her chin tilting her head up made her meet his gaze. “Don’t say that, River, and please, please don’t ask that of me, because I can’t give you that, not at all. Not ever.”

“Well, ain’t this touchin’,” Jayne sneered, but there was not a ripple anywhere in those rows and rows of shelves to indicate that Simon heard the mercenary.

“Come here, River,” Simon instructed gently, pulling her more surely into the shelter of his arms. “I want to show you something.”

The others’ thoughts and whispers and personalities fell away then, overshadowed by Simon’s quiet, understated light and drowned out by his gentle, clear voice. Finally, surrendering to the sincerity radiating outward from him, River gave in, and was immediately inundated with his determination, his affection, his fierce desire to make everything right, his love surrounding and enfolding her in safety and protection, a refuge that protected her as always from secrets that were not her own and crimes that stained her mind but not her hands.

The captain opened his mouth to say something witty, to remind them all that this was still his boat, to make light of what Simon had just given her, but River stopped him with a flat stare as Simon guided her through the midst of the crew. “You look at the tool and see only that it’s out of place,” she said quietly. “You don’t stop to look at its inherent value.”

Kaylee didn’t meet her gaze, Jayne just grunted, Wash smiled at her, Zoë was impenetrably disturbed, Inara looked on from the higher catwalk, Book nodded in approval at Simon, and Mal made a retort that slipped past River because Simon didn’t seem to hear it.

The ship folded and bent itself around them as Simon led her up ladders and down corridors, _Serenity_ revealing a passageway to only the two of them, one that others might have trod but without touching the same meaning that River now did. She kept her hand fastened around Simon’s, unwilling to lose the contact should he loosen his grip on her. Their palms were fused, she pretended to herself, as inseparable as…no. No comparisons, because this was unique and singular, inextricably linked to her and her brother alone, a phenomenon exclusive to _Simon-and-River_.

“It was going to be a surprise,” Simon explained, his voice fading in and out of her awareness, the feel of him a constant that never wholly left her. “Of course, it’s never easy keeping something from you.”

His smile, thrown at her over his shoulder, made rainbows glitter across the warmly lit corridors and sunshine beam over the common rooms and a few memories peek their way into prominence in several of the larger shards-of-her. Of their own accord, her bare feet skipped a few paces, and she swung her and Simon’s hands between them, giggled when he held up his hand to let her twirl in a circle beside him, her skirt flaring out, her hair moving as if in a breeze, her heart feeling like something more than a simple organ—feeling almost like it could protect _her_ -Simon as avidly as his heart protected her.

“Here.” Simon stopped, stood there, watched her, the beginnings of a happy grin, rife with expectation and excitement, spreading across his face, making him look almost as young as he really was.

River looked all about and a hint of fear flowed through her veins, tiny droplets of anxiety that coated everything it touched with a slimy, glistening layer…because there was nothing there.

It was a tiny nook tucked out of the way, sheltered by the ascent of stairs overhead and the curve of the bulkhead alongside and graced with a backlight of stars from a wide, narrow porthole leading to the Black.

A rug on the deck. A bundle of string propped in a corner. Nothing else.

But Simon was so pleased, more alive now than he had been since shocking a heart back into beating while fending off the advances of ignorance, as alive as he’d been when telling her he’d been accepted into the best MedAcad on Osiris.

So maybe…maybe there _was_ something here. Maybe she was the only one who couldn’t see it. Maybe _they_ had planted a time-sensitive failsafe in her, a tiny seed of darkness that would slowly creep through more and more of her mind, encroaching on all that was good and fair and right until she couldn’t see anything but starless black and plain sterility, a virus that would infect and poison and destroy.

Would even he disappear from her sight eventually? What would Simon think when he realized she was blind to him?

A tiny whimpering sound emanated from her throat as she began to minutely rock back and forth. Her grip on Simon’s hand turned almost painful. She felt the urge to shriek and cower away, curl up in a corner and squeeze her eyes shut and hide, pretend that she’d see everything she was supposed to when she opened her eyes.

“River?” Worry, now, replacing all the enthusiasm, all the earnestness, worry and concern that dimmed the sunlight and scattered the rainbows and crushed the recurring memories.

“Empty,” she keened, clutching his hand with both of hers and bringing it up to clasp against her chest, her eyes sliding closed almost against her will. “All empty and bare and austere. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Blue-white-silver—swallowing up everything till there’s nothing left but copies of their lairs, replicas of _them_. Everything else is gone, empty and blank.”

“For now,” Simon said calmly, stilling her. “I asked the captain and he said no one uses this little…room…so it’s okay for us to decorate it.”

Silence descended. River was afraid to open her eyes, afraid that maybe sound was being subverted as easily as sight. But if so…why could she still hear Simon’s voice? Wouldn’t his calming, familiar, beloved voice be the first _they’d_ steal from her?

Gradually, holding her breath inside her in an age-old superstitious ward against fear becoming real, she opened her eyes and looked around again at the nook he’d led her to.

“See?” Simon tried to pull his hand free of hers, blinked when she only tightened her grip still further, then curled his hand back around hers and tugged her forward so he could kneel and pick up the bundle of string. “Shepherd Book gave me this. I thought we could take all the pictures you’ve drawn, string them up in a long line, and hang them up in front of the window. Wash says that the light when we go to burn glows right through here, which would cast a lot of interesting patterns of light over the back of the pictures. Remember the way they lit up the art in the Osiris Gallery from behind? We could try to do the same thing with your drawings.”

Emptiness was transformed to beauty in only a few words, and River looked at Simon and marveled at the skill with which he communicated. Her own words always came out distorted or not at all, and yet he, with so small a collection of syllables and pauses, banished fear, proffered hope, illuminated potential. She wondered if she had looked as blank, as empty, as hollow when he’d followed her clues and saw her in all her agony and reached out to draw her out of the premature tomb—wondered if he saw as much potential and beauty and hope in her now.

“The pictures are missing,” she observed.

His free hand brushed her hair back from her cheek. “They’re in your room, River. I’m not dumb, you know, despite what you sometimes think—I know how much trouble I’d be in right now if I’d touched them without your permission.”

A giggle escaped her and it was so miraculous a sound, an experience, a feeling—bubbling up out of her chest—that she couldn’t help but throw herself forward and wrap her arms around Simon, her feet leaving the deck, her weight entirely dependent on her brother’s grip. And as she had known would happen, he didn’t fail her.

River kept a fierce grip on her coherence, sweeping up the shards, holding them close together, doing her best to bind them into one fractured whole, at least for these few moments. She basked in the flames of Simon’s love, his affection, his gift to her, huddled so close to the heat that it threatened to set blazing trails through the safety net of her veins, let them sear the glass together, melt it all into a single piece. Maybe it wouldn’t last, and maybe it would break and leave her with different shards to learn and understand again, but she wanted these moments, wanted these hours with Simon and beauty and a project that brought back hundreds of afternoons when they’d worked together, making forts on the grounds of their estate or decorating their rooms like battlefields in their mock-battles or recreating museums with implements and objects they could swipe from under the noses of their hired help.

Each step down the corridor was momentous, one she savored, each raised nick and smooth metal step felt all along the skin of her foot, each one memorized and purposely painted on the glass shards inside her, a more sure method of remembering than simply allowing it to reflect back whatever tiny piece of memory it chose to capture.

The smooth grain of the paper Simon had given her, the round roughness of the colored pencils Inara had handed her so casually long ago, the blank metal canvas that she had so recently thought was frightening emptiness—all of it engraved in her mind, seared into her traitorous memory, laid like towering landmarks among the wasted wilderness of her psyche.

For these few moments, reminded of who she was by Simon’s voice calling her _River_ and _mei-mei_ , she was real and whole and useful, her pain and regret and guilt and fear all healed by the abstract feel of his gift of love inside her and the more concrete act of threading string through the top of her pictures, handing them in the correct order to Simon, laughing at his clumsy, earnest efforts to hang the growing tapestry of drawings across the porthole that would glow like the sun when the Firefly burst into its own useful, beautiful fire.

“You took little pieces and sewed them up into something beautiful,” River murmured when Simon held up the long banner for her approval.

“ _You_ made it beautiful,” Simon corrected her gently. “You’re the one who can draw, _mei-mei_.”

“So can you,” she retorted, and laughed when his cheeks darkened with physical proof of his embarrassment.

“Only anatomical sketches,” he brushed aside her compliment, skipping past the shelves with memories of the drawings he’d labored over, filled with too much detail and not enough color. “Those aren’t the kind to hang up here. So I’ll stick to providing the paper, and you supply the art, all right?”

“Hang it up now,” she commanded, pointing an imperious finger, a gesture that had often delivered results, albeit results accompanied by a roll of his eyes. But Simon didn’t roll his eyes this time, only looked up and pursed his lips as he assessed the problem.

“Hmm. This should be interesting.”

“Kaylee will help.” River cocked her head and looked to the girl, standing at the invisible threshold of their nook. Blurred, rushed images of laughter and running and the taste of apples faded before more vivid images of terror and wide eyes and the smell of blood and gunshots.

Instantly, the open earnestness that made Simon shine with intense light was dimmed, banked, hidden beneath uncertainty and lingering hurt, the stone hunched in on itself, trying to hide in its own shade from the stormy, clouded light provided by the sun.

“Cap’n said you had plans for this here place,” Kaylee said softly, effort weighting down the usual lightness of her voice. “I thought I’d come see what—”

“It’s a gallery,” River announced proudly. “Just for _Serenity_ —finest tourist attraction on the ship.”

“I’m sure Jayne would argue that point in favor of his armament,” Simon said dryly. “We were just discussing how to hang up these pictures over the window.”

“Ohh, these are right pretty, River!” The sun poured its golden beams over her art, cascading liquid warmth, and River basked in it for a moment, content now that the terror was submerged behind the stone, the moon reflecting back the light of the sun. “I could rig up something to drape ‘em across the porthole, if you want. In fact, might be able to put a coupl’a rows of string along it so you get more’n just the one row.”

“That’d be great,” Simon said quietly. “Thank you, Kaylee.”

River blinked from the increased glare when a few clouds parted to allow more of the sun’s brilliance to pour through like a waterfall of light, making the shards within her gleam with incandescent light, the nightmares chased away by the gold light from Kaylee and the lightning-edged gleam from Simon. Tiny pinpricks of light, stars invading the nothingness of nightmare’s black, danced in front of her, clustered like halos around her gathered art.

“Is it finished?” she asked, a bit disappointed, when Kaylee left to bring back tools and she could find no more papers to hand her brother.

Carefully, Simon scrutinized the long wavering line of colored sketches before setting it down with the utmost of care and kneeling before her, mischief lurking indolently in his eyes. “I’m sure we could add more,” he said, and he handed her a blank sketchbook and her coloring pencils.

Her smile was full of delight, heavy with valuable pieces of joy, and she felt, maybe for the first time, almost mended, stitched up and bandaged so that the open wounds were hidden away, presenting a façade of wellness that was more real than it had ever been before.

He smiled back at her, and she danced for a moment through the joyful carpets adorning the tidy rows of his thoughts. Then she bent over the sketchbook, picturing the line of drawings and choosing what belonged next on that tapestry. The page was blank, empty, hollow…full of potential and possibilities.

For a while, then, the shards-that-were-her were filled with multi-colored nesting dolls and moons hanging over rolling expanses of stone and sunlight tiptoeing through hidden caverns opened to the sky and an angel falling from a bridge to hover protectively over a broken doll and two hands joined together and a time-worn blanket nestled close to a mechanical heart for protection. Over her head swirled _Hand me that, Simon_ and _Let me get that for you_ and _It’s real nice, what you’re doin’ for her_ and _She deserves to be happy_ and _I can’t always find the right words to say_ and _That’s all right, sometimes I end up a’sayin’ the wrong thing too_. River let the superfluous words flow past her head like fog that only vaguely pearled her skin, having already seen enough in their minds to know the hurts had been mended, all that had been broken healed by the touch of compassion witnessed, generosity offered, forgiveness bestowed.

She wished her own hurts were as easy to rectify, but the thought was gone almost as soon as it had appeared, lost to the importance of the drawings. After a time, she became aware of Simon sitting very near her, watching her draw, a small melancholy smile on his face. He said nothing, only watched her, words eluding him, dancing away out of his reach so that he grew tired of chasing them and simply rested quietly, letting his expressions and his touches and his actions speak for him.

Only later, after he’d led her to her room and tucked the blankets around her and pressed a kiss to her temple and fallen into his own dreams did she realize that words had eluded her too because if ever there had been a perfect time to tell him the three words she’d been trying to say for long, it had been then.

But then, it was hard, after hiding so long, to come out into the open, hard to remember that she didn’t have to be afraid of letting Simon see the shards.

Hard…but not, she thought, impossible.

That night, there were no nightmares.

\---


	6. Love

\---

The tapestry of pictures glowed amber and carnelian and gold with hints of colored topaz and emerald and sapphire and ruby, incandescent with beauty and joy and hope. But it was in an out-of-the-way nook, shuffled to the side, unnecessary to the ship’s most basic functions, pretty but ultimately useless.

She ghosted through the passageways, the corridors, up descending staircases and down ascending steps, drifting without anchor, flitting from place to place. Told to stay out of the way, shuffled away from the day-to-day tasks, unnecessary to the functions the crew saw carried out—pretty but ultimately useless.

Inara was leaving, the desert retreating before the winds of change and fate, all her passion and conviction swirling about, tearing down intimidating dunes to nothing but particles of sand, lost to the sky. The captain’s serenity wavered and flickered in and out like a candle, glowing still but more out of habit than any force of will, defeat tasting like ash and blood in his mouth, making him remember that he’d never really left Serenity Valley.

River watched them, listened to both the spoken and the unspoken, but they didn’t see her, each a self-contained world, neither one willing to compromise. They didn’t hear her own thoughts, didn’t hear her advice or observations voicelessly uttered, could not see what she did. And so she ghosted on, a spirit ethereally moving from place to place, incorporeally passing through walls and minds alike.

Book nurtured the extra stars birthed within him even as he pretended he didn’t notice the growing obsidian velvet on which they lay, turned all his efforts to pricking stars in the skies of the others around him, eager to pass on the silence and quiet of the faith he’d found, the Black enfolding and encircling the rough and simple towns that were Jayne. An odd kinship there, the city confined to land and the night sky that awoke imagination and inspired courage, alien to one another yet each completing the other.

They did not notice the moon between them, did not give thought to the tiny celestial body that was not important enough or large enough to become a star. So on she drifted, moving, always moving, never still, never stayed, always in eternal, restless orbit.

The mountains and the ocean needed no other, absorbed one in the other, the caressing shores and verdant valleys both beginning to whisper hints of a tiny baby brought to the ‘verse like the one River herself had helped Simon bring out from its nurturing hiding place inside its mother, beginning to build nests and carve out warm places in the sun-bathed sand. Zoë and Wash were alone in their world, and even River knew she was an intruder on their islands, knew she was not welcome amid their murmured laughter and treasured dreams and soft kisses, knew she did not belong.

She fled their presence, affected more than she liked, eager to escape the feelings that rose in her at the sight and sound and feel of their open, unbounded love and their willingness to think of the future and their propensity for happiness. It was too alien for her, too alluring, too enthralling, and so she hurriedly removed herself from the temptation.

And then there was Kaylee…and Simon. Once, it had been Simon and River, but now it was Kaylee and Simon, leaving River once more alone and unnecessary, no longer half of a whole, now just a half missing a piece. If she wept, she knew, Simon would come for her, and if she screamed, he would comfort her, and if she laughed, he would laugh with her. But there was, now and always, a piece of himself that was no longer defined by River, but by Kaylee, the moon outshone by the sun, her glory dimmed in comparison. It was impossible to envy the sun, though, not when Kaylee laughed and played with her and triumphed over fear and trauma to brush out River’s hair and tease her about things River might have once known about but now had only rudimentary knowledge of. Impossible to begrudge the stone his happiness when he’d been cold so long and now flourished with tiny green sprouts unfurling between the cracks and folds of rock, basked in the warmth the sun could freely give him and the moon had never been able to deliver.

She could not be angry, but it hurt nonetheless. Hurt because she had only one thing to call her own in the whole ‘verse and now it was no longer hers alone, shared out between the two, and she had already seen how hard it was to be stretched between two beloved things, seen how the captain chose _Serenity_ every time, unable to let go of it to reach out for Inara, left unhappy and unfulfilled and discontented.

It terrified her to think that would be Simon’s fate, and yet…and yet she could not let him go. She needed him. She wanted him. She loved him.

Yet still the words would not come.

So she left Kaylee and Simon to each other and moved on, this time feeling the pain of removal and isolation, leaving behind a piece of herself there, tucked up still beside his heart, ready to catch the dry tears he shed over her when she screamed through the night and slept uneasily during the day and shied away from the blue-white-silver place he so loved.

She drifted, alone and unnecessary and cut off from the rest, which was ironic enough to make her laugh had she been so inclined—the one who could see into everyone’s minds and hearts was the one alone. She who was most connected was the most disconnected of all. She could have laughed, but she didn’t. All her laughter was left behind in Simon’s pocket.

There was another voice, though, crowding her out and invading her places of refuge. One that was unfamiliar to her. One that hummed and murmured in a low bass that sent shivers up and down her spine. She couldn’t quite catch the distinct words of the thought, could only feel a deep sense of uneasiness. He was a predator stalking his prey, a mind fixated on _cold_ and _sharp_ and _pain_. A mind that looked at a tool and saw only a method of intimidation—his voice, his words, his presence, any object he saw, anything and everything. It was a terrifying mindset, brutal in its simplicity, more savage than Jayne’s rounded thoughts on his own weapons and wants. And yet it was also incomprehensible, almost absurdly flawed, and so deeply vulnerable in its lack of complexity, its overarching blindness.

“It’s just an object,” she told the voice. “It doesn’t mean what you think.”

But she didn’t mean what they thought either, and so they tore the object away from her and forbade her from touching it. It was a simple command, and wholly unnecessary for already she had been forbidden from touching anything outside herself, from reaching fully past the bars that chained her to the shattered remnants of her mind to touch the others. She could flow through them, incorporeal and ephemeral, but intersecting with them physically and wholly was impossible for her now.

Their thoughts and dreams and sins drowned her without context, engulfed her in meaningless phrases and incomprehensible insecurities and too-powerful emotions, all of it swirling all about her until she thought she would go mad, or maybe she already had and they were all simply the results of a fevered mind shattering and speaking in eight different voices, overshadowing her until there was only a tiny pinprick of darkness-tainted light still left to be River. What was real and what was imagined? It was so hard to tell, so hard to pick out that which mattered and that which didn’t.

She understood. She just couldn’t comprehend it all.

“No touching,” she agreed and fled, careful not to touch anyone, already rubbed raw without adding that physical bridge to her troubles. Simon’s confusion and Kaylee’s fear, up close and personal right before her, so different and altered from what they had been moments before, was too painful, and she avoided Simon’s touch, avoided his eyes, avoided his rows and rows of comforting shelves. She dared not look at him and let the invader’s thoughts taint his, dared not lead the predator to her brother.

“It’s getting very, very crowded!” she warned them all, and then she hid, but there was no avoiding the whispers that echoed and resounded through the ship, carrying her name from room to room, through every corridor, past the nook hung with the pictures speaking of happier times, spiraling through the cargo bay and up to the bridge until _Serenity_ was drenched in her name.

_River, River, River_ …

It was, in a way, comforting, to hear her name, to recognize it as her own, to feel tiny bits of herself stitched into larger wholes with every rhythmic repetition. But in a larger, more important way, it was frightening and hurtful both because her growing awareness made it somehow her responsibility to stop hiding behind her brother and face up to the others, and also because the echoes of her name were shaded and adorned and painted with _fear_ and _uncertainty_ and _surprise_ and _distrust_ and _wariness_ and a general, overriding aura of ambivalence. But there, laid beneath those shifting, writhing strands of emotion was a broad, vast canvas painted with deep overwhelming _sorrow_ and _protectiveness_ that were as familiar to her as the murmurs that constantly drifted all about her.

“She’s just a kid,” Simon said, and River recoiled from the enormity of his grief and the starkness of unwelcome truth. “She just wants to be a kid.”

She was not the only one to flinch away from that statement, not the only one to look away and think desperately on other things. But in the end, it hardly mattered because it turned out there was just enough River left to feel something twisted and sharp pierce her deep inside.

_Not a person_.

It made sense. It fit. Not broken, really, just different. Alien. Something familiar taken and perverted, twisted… _altered_. And now…now there was only something _other_ left where once had been _sister/friend/ally_.

Simon found her. He always found her, no matter where she hid, and despite all her knowledge of the scientific method, her testing still hadn’t revealed to her how he was able to so unerringly follow her. Maybe he felt her presence in his mind, maybe it left tiny marks like a heat signature to trace back to her, or maybe he just knew her well enough to predict her. But then, that would require that she be the person he’d once known—that she be a person at all—and she was no longer certain of that, if she ever had been.

His footsteps rang through the grated steps, traveling across the metal, reverberating against her cheek and her palm and her stomach and her legs, all the way down to her bare feet. She pressed herself tighter against the metal landing, squeezed her eyes tightly closed, blocking out both the view down to the cargo bay far below her and whatever expression her brother wore. Beneath her, trapped between her ribs and the landing, her right hand was closed tightly, protecting the object held within its dubious protection.

Simon didn’t say anything, not even her name, and the whispers that trailed everybody was muted almost to silence within him so that it almost seemed he brought a soothing cloud of focus and rest with him. She-who-had-been-River wanted to relax beneath that abstract atmo, but she couldn’t allow herself to do so. She didn’t deserve it, not if she wasn’t really his sister.

And then he sat next to her, still mute, and set his warm hand on her back. He didn’t coax her to rise, didn’t tell her she needed to rest, didn’t ask her how she felt. He simply sat beside her, gave himself that tactile proof that she still lived, his hand moving up and down with each of her breaths, calming himself with her presence as she so often was calmed by his presence. And River suddenly felt tears spring to her eyes, felt recognition of self flood back into her, felt relief and horror in equal measures.

“Simon,” she whimpered, and she scrambled up into his arms, settling herself beside him, leaning into him, kept in place, fixed in existence, by the weight and warmth of his arm around her shoulders and the touch of his brow resting in her hair. Relief flowed between them, mutual, equal, matched so that it was impossible to tell who had initiated the emotion, which seemed fitting. Relief and affection and the awful, foreboding knowledge that this moment might be the last peaceful one they shared, that they needed to grab hold of it and savor it and store it up for all the coming days when _Serenity_ might be taken from them, given so transiently as a glimpse of what they could have, should have, wanted to have, and then cruelly, unfairly snatched away.

“Simon, I would never hurt you,” she breathed, left hand clutching a fold of his sweater, right hand curled up between them with its hidden cargo safely out of sight.

He made no reaction, no flicker in his thoughts, no rearranging of his rows of shelves, no movement of his body. “I never thought you would,” he said simply.

And finally her tears slipped free as she burrowed deeper into his hold, gratified beyond even her own understanding at how he welcomed her embrace, relished her warmth as much as she craved his. Finally she allowed the dull, searing memories brought into the forefront by Kaylee’s recitation to bob up into her consciousness. Not the decaying corpses planted there by blue hands, but three bodies dressed in black armor, helmeted and uniformed—why were they always uniformed?—their thoughts a blanket that disappeared like smoke with nothing more than the click of a simple object.

“They were just toy soldiers,” she told him, the words bubbling up out of her now that someone was listening, all the words she might have wanted to say during their meeting if she had only known then that she was still real. “Toy soldiers just like before. Place an object in her hands, point in a direction—toy soldiers falling like dominos. Don’t look, don’t see, don’t know. In and out, point and click, pain ends. Just a game—Kaylee was playing hide-and-seek and the dominos were out. _We’re doing such good work_.”

Sobs erupted into being within the pit of her stomach, forced their brutal way up her chest, climbed up out of her throat, and were released into the air only to be tamed and softened and gentled by the caress of her brother’s fingers down her cheek, the tender way he tucked her hair back behind her ear, the steady beating of his heart, the lack of fear in his expression.

“Please, Simon,” she begged him, “I don’t want to remember what they said! Please take them out! Reach in and remove the poison, stitch up what’s left, tie her together with bandages and pills. Just get rid of their words and their hands and their games! I don’t want to remember—”

“Shh,” he calmed her, his hand on her chin turning her to look at him through a curtain of tears. “We won’t, River, we won’t. We’ll remember something else. Think back—before The Academy. Think of a good memory. Tell me what you remember.”

For a long moment—or maybe it was only a short collection of seconds—she rested her head on his shoulder and thought very hard. Glass gleamed from a thousand different directions, in a hundred different shapes, colored with dozens of shifting shadows and reflections. They swam like fish, distance and form distorted by the dimension of water, always just out of reach, never more than a flicker at the edge of her awareness. It was exhausting, usually, to try to catch hold of a single thought or memory, but now, wanting so hard to capture something good, she made the effort and came away with a tiny snapshot of life before.

“The Independents attacked us with dinosaurs,” she said, smiling as she examined every facet of the memory, holding it cupped in her hands like water that reflected back a wavering, blurry image of herself. “Cannibalism was our only option. Daddy came, granted wishes, basked in the approval, dreamed of the future.”

“I remember.” There was a smile in Simon’s voice; River could see it without even looking up. “He let me have a dedicated source box. You wanted one too, though I’m not sure why since when you did get one, you still spent more time on mine than yours.”

Another memory, darting after the previous one, a school of memory-fish swimming past her so that she could see them one by one. “Yours was in your room with you,” she said simply, then frowned as the memory turned and let her see another angle of it. “You got in trouble when I used yours and Mother found out.”

“And you stayed with me the whole week I was confined to my room. You brought games and paper and imagination and kept me company. I don’t remember us ever laughing so much.”

River hadn’t remembered that, but it pleased her to know that Simon didn’t blame her for getting him in trouble. That seemed an important concept, but the reason for it darted away too quickly for her to follow. Desperate, not wanting to slip back into the confusion of nothingness, she reached deeply for another memory, another anecdote that had happened, story that mattered, jokes that were funny.

“You gave me a present,” she said slowly, unwrapping each instant of the past event like a luxury to be savored. “When you were leaving for MedAcad. A Telefonix all my own, with a number just for us so I could call whenever I wanted to. Parents laughed when they found out how much we talked.”

“Who else was going to help me with my exams?” He nudged her with his shoulder, a mischievous sparkle in his eye that temporarily drew her out of the past memory long enough to stamp _this_ moment in her mind for future replay. “Besides,” Simon added more seriously, “everyone was always saying what a good brother I was to let you call so often, but I thought you were a good sister to let _me_ call so much.”

There were no more memories, but she didn’t need them to think of something good, not when he was holding her so closely, looking at her that way, saying these things that made it seem he didn’t regret at all having her for a sister. Gingerly, afraid of what she would find, River peeked into his mind, hesitantly explored the rows of shelves, searching for any hint that he was lying.

She found none.

“Your name was the first word I said,” she murmured.

Simon laughed, and she tightened her hand over the object she held hidden, imbuing it with even more meaning than it already possessed. “Yes. I remember Mother being upset about it since my first word had been _ba-ba_ ; she had wanted yours to be _ma-ma_.”

River glanced up at him curiously, wondering who he called Mother on the ship before realizing that he had misunderstood, had thought she referred to the first word River-that-had-been had said. She herself could remember the cold and the shock and the fear and the voices, the voices, the _voices!_ And then Simon, touching her, calming her, soothing her, _there_. And she had said his name, and he hadn’t disappeared, hadn’t vanished, had stayed, had put his arms around her and told her she was safe.

And she had believed him.

Now he was the one afraid and shocked and overwhelmed, so sure that Mal would send them packing, that he’d have to start all over again without the sun or the Black or the desert or the ocean, without _Serenity_. She looked at him and wondered if he would believe her as easily as she had believed him if she told him that they were safe.

“Objects are only tools,” she said softly, raising her empty hand to run a finger quickly and lightly across his face. “And people can’t be objectified.”

Simon’s smile was slight but sincere and fond. “You’re probably right, as usual, _mei-mei_.”

They sat there in silence, then, but it was not the heavy, overbearing silence that sometimes haunted River’s nights; it was a companionable, restful silence that eased the pressure of the others’ thoughts, always present, hanging there like a thick cloud of smoke, yet held off by Simon, as if he were the oxygen mask that allowed her to breathe normally without being slowly poisoned.

A frown passed over River’s features. Oxygen mask. There was something there, something linked to a bass voice that hissed ominously.

_Early_.

“Early,” she whispered aloud.

Simon stirred and looked down at her. “More like late. Are you tired?”

She scarcely heard him, her eyes drawn away from him and down to the cargo bay below…the suits hanging there in their usual places.

“Tired,” she lied, and smiled at Simon, keeping her right hand out of his sight.

She allowed him to lead her back to her bedroom, changed into the nightclothes Kaylee had found for her, let him come back in to fuss over her and settle the blankets around her as he did every night.

“I’m sorry, River,” he said then, jerking her focus away from the parasite latched onto _Serenity_. “I promised you I’d find a way to keep the nightmares away, but I haven’t, and now…now they may not let us stay here.”

“Home,” she said simply, and clenched her hand into a fist, crushing the object held within.

“I know.” Simon looked away, shaded blue eyes reluctant to meet hers, a sense of failure coating his orderly boxes with dust. Then, with a surge of coiled lightning flashing and ridding the rows and rows of the dust, replacing it with determined purpose, he met her eyes. “I’ll do my best to convince them to let us stay. The captain…I think he might. But, then, I’m never very good at guessing what he’s planning.”

River swallowed and picked her words carefully, spelling each one out in her mind and examining it to be sure it was the correct one before speaking it aloud. “We’ll be all right, Simon.”

The box where he had packed away his knowledge that she heard thoughts aloud, read minds like books, was suddenly in a more prominent position. He studied her closely, then nodded. “Okay, then. Good night, _mei-mei_.”

Words couldn’t be trusted—the odds were against her saying what she meant twice in a row—so she just trailed a feather-light caress down the side of his temple all the way down to his chin and fashioned a small smile for him. It was enough to make him relax; she could feel his muscles uncoiling a bit, see his thoughts unwinding, sense him slow his frenetic planning for what they’d do should they be sent away from _Serenity_.

But that wouldn’t happen. River would make certain that _Serenity_ was saved, that Simon would be able to stay aboard the ship he hadn’t realized himself was where he belonged, that the crew wouldn’t have to worry anymore about objects being made weapons.

She couldn’t remember, for certain, whether she was an object or a person herself, but she was confident that she would remember in time for…well, in time.

When the lights dimmed in Simon’s room and sleep blanketed his mind, River slipped out of her bed and padded barefoot down to the cargo bay, easily avoiding the captain as he made his way to his bunk, his thoughts a miasma of _simpler_ and _young kid_ and _shouldn’t be this hard to decide_ and _saved Kaylee/could hurt Kaylee or Inara_.

The Black welcomed her, though for a moment she was disoriented by the realization that she and the predator had switched places. He had slid into _Serenity_ and was taking his place at her brother’s side while she slipped into his ship and removed her helmet to breathe the air he had breathed earlier, recycled and cleansed and renewed. It was only temporary though, she thought, and anyway, this was a challenge posed her, a test of her skills.

She had forgotten how much she enjoyed a challenge, the games the mind played, the art of manipulation and strategy and moving pieces on a board and outthinking and outguessing an opponent. Something else _they’d_ stolen from her, ripped away from her along with so much else. Something else she now reclaimed, just as she had begun relearning bits of everything else they’d stolen from her, piece by shard by memory.

It was a fun game, and almost laughably easy, and strangely freeing…until it wasn’t. Until it was terrible and frightening and more threatening than even The Academy because at least there she had known Simon was free and safe, but now there was only emptiness and vulnerability and awful, crushing silence—so searingly empty of glib retorts, sarcastic comments, or gentle whispers—and frustrating, infuriating helplessness because she knew he was hurting and suffering and she couldn’t get to him, couldn’t touch him, couldn’t heal him! He was there and she was here and it might as well have been infinity between them.

“Simon!” Every time she called his name, he came, bursting into her room to chase away the night terrors or dashing toward her call to help her remember who she was or stand between her and the others’ clamoring thoughts. But this time, the only answer was a gunshot and her own scream rending the tiny atmosphere encircling her.

The gunshot. It wasn’t a toy gun, he wasn’t a toy soldier, and it wasn’t a game at all; it was painful and heartbreaking and the scariest thing she’d ever faced except that she knew— _knew_ because she knew Simon—that as long as he was still breathing and conscious, he wouldn’t stop. She’d seen him, been in his mind as everything was pared down to essentials, as a vortex formed around his single-minded resolve, and she knew that was happening now, could see him standing and throwing himself after her dangerous plaything.

And then there was only her voice. Only her words. Only her stuttering, unreliable means of communication to think past the quicksilver adrenaline running through her veins and to keep Simon from shaking off the blows to his ribs and his face and his side and the hot-cold agony in his leg, setting it aside as unimportant so he could once more go after whatever threatened his beloved sister, heedless of the danger or his own safety or River’s overriding plan, and she should have _known_ , should have factored this into her plan, should have realized that Simon would not let her—object _or_ person—go.

Only her voice to keep him still and calm his unconditional love’s demand for unbelievable sacrifice.

Only her words and yet, even after all this time, she still hadn’t been able to tell him the three simple words she’d been hiding, protecting, keeping close to her heart.

He was getting up again—she felt the flares of pain erupt anew all over his body as if his flesh were the sky lit by fireworks—and all she had to give him were the same words he’d given her every nightmare-soaked night, every tedious morning, every nausea-painted afternoon, every fearful or angry fit, every time the voices and secrets and terror-filled memories got the better of her. Unbeknownst to even her, she’d been storing up the words he’d given her, collecting them, planting them in the rushing river of her own mind, and now she drew them out, pebbles worn smooth and round and glistening with water and light, and she gave the liquid-curved stones back to him.

“Shh, shh, it’s all right, I’m here. It’s okay, it’s all right, Simon, I’m here.”

He was a knight, a prince riding to her rescue, heedless of the fact that _she_ had been rescuing _him_ and that he had no steed and no weapon and no reason to save her. Princes didn’t save sisters, and they didn’t get hurt saving them, and they didn’t have to battle the same dragons over and over again to keep their wards safe. But Simon had never listened to the fairytales as intently as she had so he didn’t know any of that, and anyway, he had never listened to anyone at all when it came to protecting her.

“Shh, it’s all right, I’m here, Simon. I’m not going anywhere. I’m coming, Simon, I’m coming for you.”

Within her glove, she felt the soft, worn fabric that she’d held cradled in her hand. She’d carefully retrieved it from where she’d hidden it deep in _Serenity’s_ bowels, held it close and knew that it didn’t belong to _not-a-person_ , determined within herself to give it back to Simon. And then he’d come and there’d been memories dressed like fish and happiness dousing all her purpose, and she had known she could keep the memento—keep _him_ —safe, protect it as adroitly as he protected hers, nestle it close to her heart that had finally remembered how to be more than just an organ.

But that had been before the gunshot, before the surging vortex of _purpose_ and _denial_ and _terror_ flowing between them, filling the conduit that bound them and reverberating through them both until River had screamed and cried and now murmured and soothed.

“River,” he got out between gasps of pain. She couldn’t hear him, not really, but she didn’t need ears to hear him, didn’t need eyes to see the darkness cloaking the rows of his thoughts and memories and dreams, didn’t need hands to touch the pure emotion rising from him like waves of feverish heat. “Don’t go, River. Don’t go.”

“I’m coming,” she promised, and for once, she had no trouble remembering that she’d made a promise, no trouble keeping it.

The captain brushed aside the parasite that had threatened to leach all life and hope from _Serenity_ , and he caught her when she fell, and for a moment, she was certain that he was the very personification of the Black and the Rim and _Serenity_. The ship spoke to her, noted her oddness, accepted her even knowing she was flawed, and then he mentioned her brother and the pain and fear and hurt sparked in her once more. So much trouble, so much overwhelming, over-abundant emotion, so much uncertainty. And yet, if these few, varied souls could accept her even with her frailties and flaws, then why did she think Simon, her own flesh and blood, couldn’t?

Because he was bleeding out on the deck of the ship. Curled up, alone in his own nightmare, her voice no longer there to calm him, and _terror_ such as she’d known only while deep in the clutches of the blue hands cradled him in prickly arms that ripped and tore at him until his eyes glazed over and he could not see her even when she ran to him.

Zoë and Wash were there, but she didn’t see them—heard their voices but paid them no heed—nothing there but Simon and the bullet she’d put in him.

He was white like final death, silent like unwelcome peace, motionless like starless space, and for the first time, there was no diamond-sharp lightning to illuminate his thoughts, only heavy, cloying darkness.

“Simon,” she keened, and she fell at his side, the suit that still clothed her making her awkward and graceless and unbalanced. Against the back of her hand, warm inside the glove, his piece of their memento burned as if it held a fever, mute reproach for what she had not been able to stop or protect.

“River?” His voice was tiny, dwarfed by vulnerability so immense it almost drowned out the tiny seeds of hope.

“I’m here,” she whispered, and though they were words that should have made him wince and sigh and adjust his shoulders under the staggering weight of his burden, he let out a shuddering sigh and reached up blood-stained fingers to ghost wonderingly across her face and fear faded away, only echoes of it left to resound and rebound through the brightening shelves of his mind.

Then they took him away from her, carried him to the infirmary, set him down and brought out needles and knives and gloves, and River flinched away. She dared not look at Simon, now that he was safe and awake and making noise once more, dared not step foot over the threshold of the blue-white-silver place, dared not let him know her audacity in thinking that she could actually protect him.

Kaylee slid an arm around her shoulders, tentative and ashamed, and led her to the cargo bay, helped her take the suit off. River twisted her hand and hid the memento she carried, not wanting anyone to know that she had endangered Simon by bringing it out of its safe hiding spot. _Fear_ and _shame_ and _regret_ and _compassion_ moved through Kaylee, so much that River almost flinched away from it, and so she tried to move her mind from Simon, reached out her arms and hugged Kaylee and marveled at how easily all the shadows were banished from between the sun and the moon.

Games and balls and inappropriate stories, like sunbeams, poured outward, embraced River in liquid warmth. Smiles and laughter and being a real girl, gifts bestowed on her in _Serenity’s_ care. Jayne and Book laughed and teased one another, Inara hid herself away, Mal wandered the ship, searching for other invaders, reassuring himself that his metal Valley was safe, but River ignored them, consigned them to the outer edges of her thoughts. It was new, being able to ignore or avoid things she did not want to feel or think, and precarious, but it seemed too easy now. Because behind her, above her, Zoë and Wash tore a tiny enemy from beneath Simon’s flesh, stitched up the skin and hid the blood away, and capsules of rest and healing moved through Simon’s body until he slept.

River watched him sleep, matched her breathing to his, listened to the thrum of his pulse tucked away at the back of her mind, and caressed her fingers over the worn blanket she held. Her feet rested just outside the infirmary, toes curled up against the threshold, edging forward, halted by insecurity.

She had had a plan. Simon and _Serenity_ would have been safe, and she…she would have proved something to them all, especially herself. She thought that maybe the others thought she _had_ proved her worth, but the one who had never questioned her worth in the first place, the one who had accepted her without ever once balking or hesitating, now had a scar jaggedly burned into his skin as he slept an unnatural sleep, nightmares making sweat bead on his brow and his eyes move behind closed lids.

The remnant of her childhood blanket was crushed in her fist, new creases made by the curve of her palm and the pressure of her fingers.

When Simon woke, he looked for her. She watched him from her perch at the infirmary’s window, peering inside as he looked around, called her name, spoke to Kaylee. The warm mechanic pointed back to River, and Simon smiled at her, but she looked away. It was too bright, too sharp, too clean for her there, and so she hovered at the edges.

When he limped to dinner, she sat beside him but did not look at him, did not speak to him. When he brushed his hand against her shoulder, she drew away. When he came to her room to tuck her in as he did every night, she pretended she was already asleep and did not respond to his voice.

He had given up everything, had stepped into immolation for her, had almost been taken by _them_ , had braved the Black for her sake, and now he had almost died. She had done enough, and every shard of glass within her, isolated and singular, agreed with her decision to set aside her selfishness and finally let Simon go.

Why, then, did every avoidance of him cut like serrated knives? Why did his smiles disappear and his shoulders slump and his limp become more pronounced? Why did her usual nightmares leave to be replaced by images of being completely alone and wanting to cry out for her brother only being unable to because she had forgotten his name? Why, why, why? The word resonated through every thrum of the ship, every beat of the mechanical heart and the pulse hidden in her head and breath she took; the question touched everything, made the ship hot to the touch beneath the soles of her feet, made the voiceless voices of the crew around her sizzle with curiosity and worry and uncertainty.

She had no words to give him, so she uttered no words at all, and she pretended she did not hear when Simon spoke to her, a ceaseless stream of sentences and questions and pleas that inundated the shards-of-her with memories and thoughts and hopes she dared not look at. He made the shards less sharp, the splinters less isolated, the glass less reflective, the girl more prominent.

In fact, in his presence, the shards looked almost liquid, the reflection smeared as if atop water that moved and shifted and rippled. In his presence, she was more fluid, more able to bridge the gulf between the pieces of herself, better at catching hold of herself and remembering. He was more than an anchoring stone; he was a light, a guiding star, a piece of home and familiarity and comfort and safety, and without him, she drifted eternally, wispy and misty and incorporeal and untouched by anything _real_ and _solid_ and _warm_.

So she stood up and she left, untouched by the curiosity of the crew as she ghosted past them, moving to the blue-white-silver place where Simon had holed himself up. She stood at the doorway, regarding him through the fog that blanketed her. He limped, and sometimes a grimace of pain passed across his features, but his eyes were focused on his work and his notes, chronicling all his efforts in healing his sister.

Healing _her_.

His medicines helped, she knew, could feel them even now coursing through the safety net of her veins, keeping her latched onto this moment of time as it happened. And yet…and yet it was him that kept her aware of who she was and what she had once been and what she could be again. It was his voice and his presence and his face that healed her more than anything. She had thought he stitched up the pieces of herself into a fractured whole that stayed together yet still showed clearly the effects of its shattering.

But that wasn’t it at all.

All this time, meaningless minutes and hours and days and weeks blurred all together in a long line of large events and quiet moments—all this time she hadn’t been glass at all.

Simon turned and saw her and something moved in his eyes, but he checked his immediate movement toward her. “River?” he asked, and that was it. He’d been telling her this whole time, trying to get her to see, but she’d missed the message he’d been sending her, so clearly spelled out that she’d overlooked it in search of hidden codes.

River. She wasn’t glass or shards or splinters or even broken. She was a river, liquid that moved and flowed, unbreakable but splitting up around the obstacles thrown to sit inside her and pierce her flesh and strain for the sky. Not broken, just diverted. Not altered, just interrupted. Not alone, just different from the rocky riverbed through which she flowed, complementing it, completing it.

“Simon,” she murmured, and a light flicked on in his eyes to illuminate the truth in stark, brilliant lines. He stepped toward her, responding as always to her, but he set his weight down on his wounded leg and hissed in pain.

It had always before been hard to enter this blue-white-silver place…but not now. This time she didn’t even notice entering it, only knew that she had been on the outside looking in and then, suddenly, she was inside, helping Simon sit down, touching him for the first time since he’d leapt to her rescue as quickly as always.

“Sorry,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “I was supposed to get Zoë to help me check it again, but she was with Wash and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“I can help,” River murmured, and fluttered her fingertips over the place on his leg where she knew the bullet had entered with destructive force and painful ramifications.

“Are you sure?” Simon asked gently. “We have to do it in here.”

River rolled her eyes, amusement bubbling over the surface of her river. “I’ve been in here before, Simon.”

He smiled contentedly, even through his pain, and River swelled and chuckled and easily gushed over the obstacles _they_ had planted in her liquid flesh at the sight of it.

Tools became healing kisses, implements became medicines that soothed red, angry flesh, and her hands turned from destructive weapons into gauze that bandaged and mended. And her presence, her words, her smiles, they made Simon smile, made him reach out and so tenderly brush her hair back out of her face as she tended the wound, made his shelves gleam with inner light, his boxes lighten and brighten, his mind adorn itself with rich, happy colors, the same colors she often wore, purple and red and coral white and warm brown.

“I thought you were mad at me for messing up your plan,” Simon ventured when she had finished calming the flames in his leg, his voice dipped in that teasing tone, feathered with that terrifying vulnerability still shadowing his eyes.

In answer, not trusting her voice, River shyly took out the piece of the memento she carried with herself. It weighed almost nothing, and yet its weight was substantial on her palm as she showed it to Simon. A tiny crease marred his brow as he tried to understand, but without even hesitating, he pulled out the piece he carried. Carefully, intently, both of them— _Simon-and-River_ , she couldn’t help thinking, pleased—bowed their heads over the matching pieces of fabric, matching them up so that the torn edges lay against each other.

A tiny breath sprouted wings and flew away from her mouth when they did match up perfectly, unmarred by the extra creases and faded colors and tattered ends that had been added to both pieces since she’d ripped one whole into two halves.

“Perfect,” Simon whispered with a small smile that made something sharp and soft and painful and pleasant all at once, all impossibly swirled together, pierce her heart.

“I thought I couldn’t keep it,” she admitted, the words broken and staggered but there and true. “Thought I had to give it back and let it go, learn how to be alone.”

An immediate denial leapt from Simon, vehement and genuine and accompanied by the feel of his hands once more framing her, forming the riverbed that kept her flowing straight and true despite the nightmares skipped over her surface and sunk to her bottom.

“She doesn’t want to be alone.” Concentrating, determined, River repeated, “ _I_ don’t want to be alone. Words don’t come right. They play games with me, switching places with each other and dancing out of reach and laughing at me. She can give you codes and slip you hints, but she can’t say what she wants to.”

“It’s okay, River.” Simon ducked his head to look straight in her eyes, the meaning imbuing his next statement underscored by the earnestness so apparent in every line of his body, every feature of his expression, in the words he spoke and the pauses between each word and the things he didn’t say, all of it so plain and clear to any who chose to look and listen. “ _Mei-mei_ , I will always be there for you. I’ll follow you anywhere in the ‘verse, and I’ll never let anyone hurt you again. Okay? But…but you can’t leave me. All right? I…I need you, River, need you with me. We’ll be okay; we just have to stick together. Promise me?”

“I promise,” she told him simply, and all the words were there, laid out before her like treasures placed prominently on the fabric of her memento, waiting for her to look through them and pick out the perfect collection. One hand holding his piece of fabric next to hers, spread across his lap, she lifted the other to trace his features, not framing him, just defining him, making sure he was real, communicating her meaning through touch as well as voice. “I never said it, but I meant it all the time. It connects everything, makes halves become whole, leaves a clear trail to follow, cause to so many effects—I love you, Simon.”

His gaze was caught on hers for a long moment, his voice stunned away, his blue eyes—shaded and nuanced and substantial—gleaming with crystal tears that shimmered and melted. Finally, he swallowed and said, “I love you too, River.”

All of that reaction, but no surprise anywhere inside him. And River blinked away her own crystal tears, and stepped closer to his side, and slid her arms around his form, feeling his strength and his vulnerabilities, wrapping both of them up in her slender, fragile frame and feeling them succored and nurtured while she herself strengthened and sheltered, in turn, in the safety and refuge of his arms around hers.

Words eluded her, but love never had. He had played with her, and encouraged her, and followed her through the Black, and rescued her from darkness and pain, and given her back self and safety and solace, and he needed her, wounded and weary and confused and sometimes mute as she was, just as much as she needed him.

Words eluded her, but Simon never had, and that was enough, more than enough, to make her, finally and blessedly, whole.

“ _Mei-mei_ ,” Simon murmured against her hair, and _his_ -River smiled and laughed and knew, for the first time, that it would be all right because one word out of every language in the ‘verse had never eluded her and never would. One word. The only word she needed.

“Simon…”

 The End


End file.
